Slides from my Curiosity Machine class on 10/15/14 at Pasadena Public Library. We designed wind pumps that worked like a crank to convert rotary motion to linear reciprocating motion and pump water.

1. Hands-on Science and
Engineering at Pasadena
Public Library
Oct. 15, 2014

2. Energy cannot be created or
destroyed; it can only be converted
from one form to another.

3. Build a wind-powered water pump!

4. The shape and size of a wind
turbine, number of blades, and
angle of the blades will all vary
the amount of energy it is able
to make. Your design will
convert rotational (or circular)
movement of your wind turbine
and transfer it into linear
reciprocating (or up and down)
motion using a crank.
(from Curiosity Machine
website:
https://www.curiositymachine.o
rg/challenges/54/)

5. *Windpumps were first used by
Muslims in the Middle East and
Central Asia in the 9th century
*The first known instance of using
wind to power a machine was by the
Greek inventor Hero of Alexandria in
the 1st century? He invented a wind
powered organ with a wind wheel
that powered a piston and forced air
into pipes (see left).
*Dutch windmills were not only about
making flour. Many windmills also
pumped water out of the ground,
which was necessary because most
of the Netherlands is below sea
level.

6. p. 17, Wind
Power by Ian
Graham,
published by
Raintree
Steck-
Vaughn
Publishers

7. Daniel Halladay, who in 1854 invented the wind pump that
was used in farms across America for almost a century.
Halladay faced numerous challenges. How to make his windmill
simpler? Easier to run? Affordable?
He came up with one clever idea after another. He abandoned
the idea of sails in favor of vanes.
He fabricated a “rudder”—a tail, so to speak. As the wind
shifted direction, it kept the mill pointed right into it.
Before long he conceived a governor that adjusted the mill’s
speed automatically—no danger of spinning out of control and
destroying itself. He made it more and more efficient. So good that
the windmill could run itself.
And he perfected the pump that would suck up the water, and
how the energy should be transferred from the spinning vanes at the
top down to the pump.
From “Daniel Halladay, the Remarkable Connecticut Inventor I’ll Bet You
Never Heard Of,” by John Guy LaPlante.
http://valleynewsnow.com/2011/09/daniel-halladay-the-remarkable-connecticut-
inventor-i%E2%80%99ll-bet-you-never-heard-of/

8. I didn’t
want to
use
cardboard
because
it’s tough
to cut. But
foam…
doesn’t
work.