Wind Energy: Catching Some Wind Over New York City
Lesson Plan
| Catching Some Wind Over New York City – A Case Study |
| Summary In this lesson students are introduced to Architect, Jeremy Peang-Meth. Mr. Peang-Meth was asked to design a local, renewable energy source for building located in the heart of New York City. While the tall buildings surrounding the site caused some obvious problems, there were also some benefits to the site. Students are asked to consider the constraints posed by the location of the building and then, based on their analysis of those constraints, to find a roof location that will provide good energy capture from the wind. After they have made that choice, students are invited to view Mr. Peang-Meth’s solution as he presents it in the provided video. |
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Precedents This lesson assumes that students have been introduced to wind turbine design and function as well as some key factors in wind turbine siting. |
| *Keywords (Metadata) science | environmental science | problem solving | real-world | wind energy | electricity | New York City | architecture | renewable | sustainable | wind |
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Standards NC Science Essential Standards - Psc3.1, EEn.2.8.1 NextGen Standards - PS1,PS2,PS3, ESS3, ETS2, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3,1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 2.1, 2.2, 2.5, 2.6. Common Core Math - N-Q, F-IF Other - Energy Literacy (1,4, 5, 6) |
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*Learning Outcomes
Students will solve a real-world problem as they choose the best site to gather wind energy on a roof of a building. Students will better understand how architects and engineers solve real-world problems, as they hear first-hand from an architect. |
| Materials Needed (if not indicated in lesson documents) Computers with Internet connections for students to work in groups of 2-3 students per group are required for this lesson. Headsets are also useful for this activity. |
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*Teacher
Instructions for Conducting Lesson
While this lesson can be conducted in a variety of ways, it works well as a small group project. The student handout presumes that students will watch Part I of the video in their groups with a copy of the student handout available. When Part 1 of the video is complete and students are asked to decide where the turbines should be located on the roof, they should discuss the questions on the handout and use their responses to make their final choice. The choices made by each group and the rationale for the choices they make should be discussed before proceeding to Part 2 of the video when Mr. Peang-Meth describes the tools he used to find a solution. A Powerpoint with images from the video and possible student questions is provided with the lesson. The Powerpoint can be used either before viewing the video, to introduce some of the information in the video, or after viewing the video to reinforce the information contained in the video. 1. Divide the class into work groups and distribute the student worksheets. 2. Ask them to begin by watching video (You may also want to show the video to the whole class once and then let students review the video as they work on the handout as needed). Stop the video as instructed on the video before the solution is revealed. 3. Students should use the worksheet to guide their discussion and to resolve questions about wind direction, obstruction location and the orientation of the building site to wind and obstructions. 4. Groups should then decide on the best roof location for wind turbines. After the group has chosen the best location, each of the groups should be asked to present their solutions and explain their choice of locations and how that choice responds to the challenges presented by Mr. Peang-Meth on the video. 5. Proceed to the Part 2 of the video. Mr. Peang-Meth describes the use of Computation Fluid Dynamics Models to provide a detailed sense of how wind moves over the roof of the site at different heights. This is an opportunity to discuss the use of mathematical models to fill in data that would be too expensive to generate from direct measurement. 6. A video is provided that provide additional information about John Dabiri, the MacArthur Fellow who improved wind farm performance by applying biomimetic discoveries made from watching schools of fish. (see website URL below) 7. A video is provided that documents a high school student’s (Harish Pudukodu) experience with a research project in which he evaluated the potential of capturing wind energy from cars that pass wind turbines on the roadside. (video is included in Unit 6, Lesson 1; video file is titled: Harish Big Idea_Video.mp4) |
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Additional Websites:
John Dabiri, MacArthur Fellow http://youtu.be/x2audOlniaQ |
| Original version (if legally derived from somewhere else) |