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The 2024 Teacher Training Program (TTP) provided six teachers from Florida an immersive professional development on wind engineering hazards, focusing on the tenets of engineering design. Four of the teachers that attended were from Title 1 schools, the other two came from a county that does not have Title 1 high schools. The counties reached are Sarasota, Alachua, Leon, Duval, and Escambia. The teachers participated in workshops led by UF faculty and staff in the state-of-the-art Herbert Wertheim Laboratory for Engineering Excellence. During one session, they engaged in a mini course mapping camp designed by the UF Center for Instructional Technology and Training. This allowed them to consider how they might implement a project in their classrooms, aligned to standards. Co-PI Gurley led the teachers in a wind turbine build activity, supported by EF staff and NHERI REU students. The teachers iterated on their designs to increase the power generated based on initial testing. On the final day, teachers gave a presentation of the project they intend to integrate into their classrooms over the upcoming academic year, with our support. Projects span the concepts of coastal erosion, floating oil rigs, structural impacts, and energy generation, many of which contain attributes that are new to us in the wind tunnel.
A reporter from the HWCOE attended the showcase and interviewed participants for an article that was published on the college’s website: https://www.eng.ufl.edu/eed/2024/06/11/waisome-helps-high-schools-educators-lean-into-windy-lessons-at-uf/.
2024 Teacher Trainning Program
For the latter half of 2024, the TTP focused on supporting teachers from our prior cohorts. Ms. Karen Breuning of Pensacola High School, from the first TTP cohort, had a scheduled trip canceled due to a hurricane. This group of students created tipping towers that we will test in the lab. We also planned to engage them with a standard wind turbine activity. Ms. Maureen Shankman of Santa Fe High School, from the second cohort, plans to visit in the new year. We are experimenting with ways to design the testing mechanism for Ms. Shankman’s group due to their focus on coastal environments. The team plans to build a tank at the back of the wind tunnel bay to test structures “built” in varying coastline ecologies.
Date: April 21-22, 2023
Organization: Pensacola High School, Pensacola, FL
Contact: Karen Bruening, Teacher, Science Educator/Engineering Team Sponsor, Pensacola High School
Participant description: 13, 9th grade science students
Activity: Design-build-test project wind turbines to produce clean energy
Background: Dr. Gurley and Ms. Bruening met through the Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) program in the summer of 2020 and have been working together every year to challenge her 9th grade science students with hands-on design-build-test activities. Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Gurley visited with the students remotely to talk through physics concepts associated with wind engineering related activities and used NSF NHERI sponsorship to send supplies to the students for their project builds. The students shipped their projects to Dr. Gurley and his team to test in the boundary layer wind tunnel. The experiments were video recorded and sent to Ms. Bruening to follow up with lessons learned in her classes.
April 2023 marked the first time Ms. Bruening and her students and parent chaperones were able to make the 5-hour drive to Gainesville, visit the campus and laboratory, and test their designs in person.
Description: Ms. Bruening and Dr. Gurley created a lesson plan and hands-on design-test activity for her students. The classroom conversation focused on electricity generation via standard steam turbine mechanisms. The use of fossil fuels as a steam generator was introduced, and the talk then turned toward non-polluting mechanisms to rotate a turbine. The students connected the idea of harnessing wind energy to rotate the turbine and produce clean electricity. Dr. Gurley sent a kit with materials to construct the blade system of a wind turbine. Students worked to design and assemble their own blade system. The degrees of freedom included blade size, number of blades, and blade pitch.
Ms. Bruening, parent and teacher chaperones, and 13 students drove to Gainesville on April 21, 2023. They first toured campus and visited the Florida Museum of Natural History. They spent the next day with Dr. Gurley and the UF NHERI EF Site Operations Manager Scott Powell at the UF Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel. After a tour the students experienced the wind tunnel first hand as they stood at the test section and we turned on the fans. Each turbine blade design was then mounted to a mast with a generator and tested in the wind tunnel using a steady wind tunnel speed and a volt-meter to measure the output. Given the re-configurable nature of the turbine blade kits, students were then able to make changes to their design and retest with the goal of improving their output voltage. Each design was reconfigured several times by the students, demonstrating the value of design-test iterative experimentation.
We ended the day with a catered lunch and one-on-one and small group discussions about the days activities, and the bigger picture of STEM education and how the students can be the next generation of problem solvers
Date: March 22, 2023
Organization: Marion Oaks Elementary School, Ocala, FL
Contact: Maleigha Flynn
Participant description: 3rd grade science students with a wide demographic spread
Activity: Dr. Gurley and Mrs. Flynn met through the Scientist in Every Florida School (SEFS) program. The two had several remote meetings to customize the activities to her students. In March of 2023 Dr. Gurley visited the classroom for three activities:
The students responded positively to the days events. They were very interactive during the presentation/conversation activities and were particularly delighted with the hands-on creation and testing of their wind turbine design. The trial-and-error process increased their enthusiasm with each iteration, and they self-organized a friendly competition for best design.
9th grade art students
Date: February 24, 2023
Organization: QI Roberts High School, Putnam County, FL
Contact: Kala Davis, Teacher
Participant description: Six 9th grade art students
Activity: Design-build-test project stability in strong winds
Description: Dr. Gurley and Ms. Davis met during the 2022 NSF NHERI UF Teacher Training program. The two had several remote meetings to create a hands-on design-test activity for her students. Dr. Gurley met remotely with the students in the fall of 2022 as they initiated their design projects. Each student was given a kit with Keva sticks, wood glue and clamps and tasked with designing and building a tower that can remain upright in strong wind. Ms. Davis teaches art and architecture and encouraged the students to prize a combination of purpose and aesthetics in their designs.
In February of 2023 Ms. Davis and her six students visited the UF Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel (UF NHERI EF) to test their creations. The students started their visit with a tour of the NSF NHERI EF facility and experiencing the wind tunnel first-hand.
Their towers were then placed near the wind tunnel exit and the wind speed increased slowly. The towers began to tip over as the speed increased, until one remained standing. This procedure was conducted multiple times to investigate the importance of repeatability in experiments.
The group moved to a classroom for a working lunch where we discussed the lessons learned. Students related concepts such as base width, center of gravity and projected wind area to the observed behavior of their towers.
The classroom conversation then focused on electricity generation via standard steam turbine mechanisms. The use of fossil fuels as a steam generator was introduced, and the talk then turned toward non-polluting mechanisms to rotate a turbine. Ultimately the students connected the idea of wind energy to rotate the turbine and produce clean electricity.
