Math: Geometry: Two-Dimensional Shapes 27&28 I
Wind Power! STUDENT HANDBOOK, PAGE 78
Objective: Students will apply the formulas for the circumference and area of a circle to calculate the blade sweeps of wind turbines. 1 Warm-Up: • Ask students about their experiences with power outages. How did they manage without electricity? • Ask students what they know about alternative methods of creating electricity. • Have students discuss the role of wind with sailboats (powers the boat), windmills (grinds grain or pumps water), wind turbines (creates energy), kites (causes the kites to rise), and other examples. • Ask students if they’ve ever seen an actual windmill or wind turbine and to describe or compare them. 2 Read: You may read “Wind Power!” aloud or ask students to read with partners or independently. Start by telling students that the article will tell them about the first offshore wind plant in the U.S. As they read, ask students to pay attention to some of the similarities and the differences between wind turbines on the ocean and wind turbines on land. After reading, ask: What are some difficulties with using turbines on water as compared with using turbines on land? (Possible answer: It is more difficult to build turbines in water, and it is more difficult to move equipment and to get workers there to work.) (Compare and Contrast) 3 Guided Practice: Read the introduction to “Working with Circles,” page 79 of the student handbook. • What are you being asked to find? (We are asked to find the blade sweep, which is the area of the circle created by the rotation of the blades.) • Use the picture to show that the spinning blades create a circle. • Draw a circle on the board and shade it in to show the area of a circle. Explain that to answer the example, you need to use the formula for the area of the circle.
36
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs