Wind energy

Stekene Belgium

1. What is wind? Wind you can't see it but it is there though. Wind is flowing air. It's hard to explain how that works, but

I'm going to try it anyway.Wind is air that flows from high pressure to low pressure. Just think of a bicycle pump or to a balloon. If you press or a bicycle pump inflates a balloon is the air pressure in the bicycle pump or the balloon higher than abroad. If you empty the balloon, the air flows out very hard. Of high pressure to low pressure. That is wind. But how can there be on Earth high pressure and low pressure. Because of course there are no large balloons in the air that deflate and thus create wind. Also, there is of course no major bicycle pump that blows air over the Earth. But high pressure and low pressure can also arise from it on the one place is hot because the sun shines there and at another place cold, because the Sun is not shining. Also then creates difference between air with high pressure and air with lower pressure. By that difference can go the air flows. For example, if the above Belgium in spring is warm, while the sea is still cold (winter) than the warm air above the land rises to the top. Warm air always goes to the top. Air above the land then goes away. That space is filled by cold air from above the sea that flows to the country.

2. How to use the nature the wind?

Some plants have seeds that are constructed so as that the wind they can easily spread. Everyone has ever seen fluff of dandelions. That are just parachutes. And that can travel very far through the air. Many other plants have also fluff, such as Thistles. And some trees have seeds animal look like helikopters. For example, the seeds of a Maple. That go around run as they fall from the tree and they can also come very far in the wind. Apart from seeds of plants can also small animals travel around the entire earth. Even without wings. For example, spiders. By the thread where they normally create a web to hang in the wind, the wind the spiders. This allows them to escape from danger or travel to new areas. Often travel only a few meters, but the spiders some spiders have been discovered very high in the sky (8 km) and hundreds of kilometers from the country. Of course also make use of the wind birds. For example, to very long on the same spot to stay in the air. Perhaps have you ever seen a gull that very long with wind against silent could linger without its wings. Nice looking around on the beach or somewhere maybe some goodies.

3. How are people using the wind?

Apart from plants, spiders, birds and other animals such as butterflies, also people use wind for all sorts of things. People use the wind for all different things: kite flying, sailing, and turn around of mills, for example. I want to tell something more about mills. A mill is in fact a kind of engine where you can do everything. That engine runs on the wind and not on gasoline or electricity. A long time ago people used to grind corn and flour mills. But also, for example, to water to pump out all wet areas. Water pumps from the ground up in very dry areas is also possible. But a wind mill was also used to run machines to large trunks by saws for making boards. For example, those planks were used to build sailing ships. And who could formerly just sail through the wind. Sometimes turning old mills still. If it blows the blades can be considerably with 100 kilometers per hour in the go round. Nowadays, people use windmills especially to make electricity. Such a wind mill is also called wind turbine. That's kind of like a dynamo. Perhaps you have a dynamo on your bike. As the alternator spins against your bicycle wheel he makes electricity and goes your bicycle lamp burning. A windmill or wind turbine is not run by a bicycle wheel, but by the wind. And he also makes electricity by turning it around. That is very convenient, because wind is free, there is almost always wind, wind is not and wind is not bad for the environment and the climate. Oil (there is petrol made of), though, is not free, and is bad for the environment and the climate. Modern windmills are sometimes as many as 100 feet tall and have 2 or 3 blades (which are called rotors). Those blades are 45 feet long. one such windmill can per year for 1250 (twelve hundred and fifty) houses generate electricity. The blades turning sometimes with more than 350 km per hour around.

4. Hurricanes

People can use wind well , but wind can also be very dangerous. Or scary. If the storms for example. This is the in the next two chapters. If it has less power than the wind blowing softly when it is hard blows. About 200 years ago (in 1806) has a captain (his name was Francis Beaufort) in the absence of very well thought about it. He made a distribution of wind force 0 to wind force 12. If it's calm, the wind force 0. If the very few blows the wind force 1. And at wind force 2 the weather blows harder. For example, storms with wind force 9 and moves the air with approximately 80 kilometers per hour. In Europe we make sometimes a heavy storm of wind force 10. I'm almost blown away itself. But wind force 12 is much worse. That is then called a hurricane. That come here not for happy in Europe. In a hurricane, the wind faster than 120 km per hour to about 250 kilometers per hour.

Hurricanes are big powerful storms. The wind in the storm blowing very hard but the storm itself goes slowly at a speed of 25 kilometers. If you cycle very hard, you can track. Such a storm has a bit of a circle shape and can be quite large. If you draw a straight line from one side to the other of that circle is that sometimes as many as 500 to 1000 km. The crazy thing is that it is in the midst of the storm at all. The Sun is shining and there is no wind. It is called the eye of the storm. A hurricane makes for lots of rain and very high sea waves. Hurricanes occur in the warmest months of the year over oceans (these are very large seas) of which the water has become very hot. Because it's so hot is evaporated the water (just like the vapor over a pan of boiling water) and increases it on top, along with the warm air. High above the Earth large clouds that always go faster. That is the beginning of a hurricane. If a hurricane comes ever closer to the country, the eye of the hurricane is getting smaller. What happens then, is that the air in order to run faster and faster. That devastation to the land. Whole houses are destroyed and sometimes flooding entire areas. There are three different names for such storms: hurricanes, cyclones and typhonen.

Hurricanes

5. Tornado's

You all might have seen on television : a trunk from the air soaks up everything. That's a tornado. A tornado is a violent storm which is much smaller than a hurricane. Smaller, but with much stronger whirlwinds. A tornado usually arises in a severe thunderstorm. Go to the air currents than wild times and come from different sides. The air can then suddenly like a spiral. Then a wide trunk. Be wide, but never really much larger than a football field. And that runs from the cloud to the ground trunk. As if the cloud is vacuuming. In that trunk runs the air rapidly into it around. The air can run laps with 450 kilometers per hour. The trunk is really a vacuum cleaner and sucks up everything which is not stuck. Cars, houses, cows, sheep, lampposts, caravans, people who do not shelter. You name it. everything goes into the air. Moments later, everything falls down again. Tornado's jerking off trees out of the ground, empty ponds with fish and suck all. even though it sucks the schlong you not up, then a tornado is still very dangerous: flying everywhere pieces of glass, wood and metal in it around with tremendous speed. Really afraid you do not have to be that you here in the Netherlands trunk of a tornado. Tornadoes are more common in America than anywhere else in the world. There come in America about 600 tornadoes per year.

However, we in Europe also called for tornadoes. We call that then mostly whirlwinds or (if they are above water) water bailing. A heavy storm struck In 1925 – probably a tornado – the town of Borculo in Eastern Netherlands. The trunk of the tornado changed the town within 5 minutes in a mess.

TO DO:

* create yourself an expression with ' wind ' and explain what the phrase

means.

* create a drawing of what flies in the air like when a tornado passes

through your street.