Educational Material

For an indepth review of wind power please see: http://www.windpower.org/

For student material on wind power please see: Heliotronics

Guide to this material:

Energy discussions combine science and history, technology and politics. This package is perhaps just as useful for a social studies class as it is for a science class.

There are two PowerPoint presentations; one is an overview of Energy issues called Energy Without Waste prepared for one hour with middle school students and the other Wind Presentation to A Town that was used in 15 minutes in a community introduction.

More in-depth material can be used to discuss:
- Energy in Society (Policies, Environmental Impacts, Supply Choices)
- Exploitation of oil resources, including the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (A detailed discussion of exhaustion patterns by an environmental group) - Renewable Energy Policy in Massachusetts
- Hull's Wind Turbine, Where One Community Made A Choice
- Wind Energy Concepts (science and technology)
- Wind Energy as a Major Supply

- Overview of Energy for Society. The PowerPoint presentation Energy Without Waste is a comprehensive introduction, with discussion of what do we use Energy for, and what do we use.
- For energy, examples and illustrations of fossil fuels, renewable technology, and the meaning of Fossil Fuel Depletion. Wind Energy Use in Vermont and Worldwide shown through files Wind Mountain, Vermont and anything labelled "BTM". (BTM are the initials of Birger T. Madsen, a Danish man that founded a major wind turbine company, and now offers annual reports on the growth of the wind industry.)
- Exploitation of oil resources, including the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. This may be the central debate, so two folders are dedicated to this topic. World Resources Institute, an environmental protection organization, has made a website for this discussion. Two files, Read ANWR and End of Oil, and Read About Peak for Oil are narrations, with the other files showing in graphs some of the facts and trends of oil dependency.

- Non-Renewable Energy, is a more diverse collection of articles from newspapers on Global Warming linked to Fossil Fuel, nuclear waste issues, a review of Hubbert's Peak, a book that discusses the end of oil in the manner that the World Resouces Institue does. A dramatic image of an oil tanker-truck caught in a flood in Houston completes this very incomplete collection.
- Renewable Energy Policy in Massachusetts. Massachusetts law established a Trust Fund to support renewable energy development. The website from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative is excerpted here.
- One Community Made A Choice. This material is a begining point, and suggests that people, in communities, are often the decision-makers making the chioce for Renewable Energy. There is the overview Powerpoint made by a teacher in Marblehead for his community, Presentation to A Town, and Mhead Wind Anemometer, a photo from Marblehead of the citizens making wind measurements. Hull is the full example of this, and we have here photos and newspaper clippings from Hull, as well as BILL_NOT, documenting the wind turbine has eliminated electric bill for street lighting for the Town of Hull. Under the folder Policy Choices, another folder, Others Made Choice gives just a sample of renewable energy choices made, from Europe to the Carribean, and Chelmsford.
- Wind Energy Concepts (science and technology) Two file folders give some basics: Wind Turbines and Atmospheric Science.

- The Wind Turbines folder is not as user-friendly, but the two brochures from Danish manufacturer Vestas, V-47 Brochure and V-66 Brochure describe the turbines used in Hull (V-47), and in upstate New York (V-66). V is for Vestas, and the number is the diameter of the blades, in meters.

- Atmospheric Science Folder is from a Danish website for school students, describing how the Sun and Earth create wind.

Wind energy resources from State to State, as well as, Internationally, are included from the American Wind Energy Association.

This has been a labor of love.
Mike Jacobs
mike_windpower@yahoo.com