Wind-Powered Sail Cars
Student pairs design and construct small, wind-powered sail cars using limited quantities of drinking straws, masking tape, paper and beads. Teams compete to see which sail car travels the farthest when pushed by the wind (simulated by the use of an electric fan). Students learn about wind and kinetic and renewable energy, and follow the seven steps of the engineering design process to ask, research, imagine, plan, create, test, and improve their sail cars. This activity is part of a unit in which multiple activities are brought together for an all-day school/multi-school concluding “engineering field day” competition.
Two sail car competitors.Copyright 2015 Eric Anderson, University of California Davis
Humans have been harnessing wind energy for thousands of years. Wind-powered devices convert kinetic energy in the wind into other more useful forms of energy. Sailboats convert the wind's kinetic energy to kinetic energy for transportation. Wind turbines convert the wind's kinetic energy to electrical energy that can be used to power our homes and devices. Today's engineers follow the steps of the engineering design process and apply their understanding of physics to design highly efficient wind turbines to make wind energy a viable source of renewable energy. In this activity, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to create small-size wind-powered sail cars that convert the wind's kinetic energy to kinetic energy that moves the sail cars.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Build a small-scale wind-powered sail car.
- Explain that energy is transferred from the wind to the sail car.
- Explain that the energy in the wind and the energy in the movement of the car are forms of kinetic energy.
- Explain how they used experimentation and testing to iteratively revise their designs.