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Battleship Windfarms

T-shaped piece of paper with a grid on the table surface in the foreground and a grid with diagonal red lines and curvy diagonal blue lines on the vertical surface. The back surface also has a grid. The game sits on a grey classroom desktop.
Learning Goals

Learning Goals:

  1. Students can use a coordinate plane to decide on an appropriate location for a hypothetical wind farm. They will consider factors such as whether the location is in the path of the wind or in a migratory path before deciding where to build.
Materials List

Handouts

Group Supplies (2 per group)

  • 1 Battleship grid template marked with wind and bird migration paths
  • 1 Blank battleship grid
  • Pens or pencils

Important Links

Next Generation Science Standards
  •  5-ESS2-1: Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact. 
  • CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.5.G.A.1 Graph points on the coordinate plane to solve real-world and mathematical problems.

Time: 90 mins or 2 periods of 45 mins

Wind power is a renewable resource that provides humans with an alternative to fossil fuels. However, wind farms cannot be built everywhere and when they are in the path of migratory birds, they can kill or injure these birds.
In order to make mindful decisions about where to position wind turbines and wind farms, scientists and engineers must consider both migration patterns and wind patterns.

 

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