“Wind Power” by Richard Spilsbury

Lily has been interested in wind power for quite some time. The main reason for this being that there is a wind farm about 10 miles from our house.
I happened to find this book at a library within our library system, and they sent it to our local branch. Grateful we have such a great library system in our county!

We really took our time studying this book. It was amazing to see things mentioned in the book visible in our every day lives.

The first concept in the book is kinetic energy. This is how wind is made. Lily had a hard time understanding this, so we went outside when it was windy. Even though we can’t see the wind, we can feel it.

These are the kinds of turbines near our house. Lily is fascinated by them and was excited to learn more.

This book poses discussion questions, which I asked Lily. We then looked for things in our area that related to the question.

We labeled this picture of one of the turbines near our house. Lily liked being able to name all of the parts in the picture.

Since trees were the first thing she mentioned, we went outside to see all of the trees we have that slow the wind down. She also mentioned we need trees because they make clean air.

One of the issues brought up against wind power is that the blades are sharp and move fast. Birds can be killed if they flight into the blades.

Andrew W., a friend who works on wind turbines was kind enough to send Lily several pictures of his wind power adventures. Here are her two favorite pictures:

A view of a wind farm from on top of a wind turbine. (Note: The tower of a turbine is 262 feet off the ground.)

This one is Lily’s absolute favorite. I think nacelle is her new favorite work. She always has to mention it when talking turbines.

*Graphics by mom. Words by Lily, transcribed by Mom.