Teaching Teachers About Wind Power
When science teacher Michael Arquin started educating students about wind power, he had no idea his curriculum would come to influence thousands of teachers and students all across the country.
After earning his B.S. in Biology and Environmental Studies from UC Boulder and a M.A.T. in Science Education from Cornell, Arquin, 37, taught for five years in Santa Catalina School in Monterey California. He left teaching in 2003 to pursue a fellowship at Tufts University. There he found his passion for wind energy coalescing into a bona fide project. As a fellow at the Wright Center for Science Education, Arquin formally founded the KidWind Project with the goal of developing curricula and simple wind turbine kits to improve the quality of wind energy science education throughout the U.S..
As KidWind evolved, Arquin began to see a dearth of classroom-appropriate wind energy hardware. “There were a lot of products out there but they were like 300, 500 dollars,” Arquin said. “Not anything you’d want to bring into a classroom.” As a result, he began making and selling more basic kits. One project requires students to modify and arrange the blades of a turbine, and measure the electrical output with a volt meter to determine the ideal configuration. Another tips its hat to windmills of old by seeing how much weight can be hoisted by wind power alone.
