On Wednesday we learned about renewable and non renewable energy.

Energy is what powers things up.  We use energy to keep our food cool in the fridge, to drive our vehicles, to use our computers, to watch TV and to switch on our lights.  We use energy every day for lots of reasons.

Renewable energy is energy that will last as long as the Earth does.  Types of renewable energy are water, wind and sunshine.

Non-renewable energy is energy that will eventually run out.  Types of non-renewable energy are petrol, coal and natural gas.

We looked at Wind Power.  We get wind power from wind turbines.  Wind turbines are now built in wind farms on land and more recently have been built in the sea.  The wind makes the blades of the wind turbine spin round.  When the blades move, it turns a generator through a drive shaft which creates electricity.  All of the wind turbines in the farm are connected so they all move together.

We made our own windmills from paper, a stick, a butterfly clip, Sellotape and a juice straw.  It was quite tricky to work out how we could get the blades to spin, but eventually (when the orange juice arrived from the kitchen) we found a solution.  Some of them weren’t as spinny as we would like them to be, so we talked about the space between the clip and the straw.  We would need to make the hole bigger for the windmill to turn quickly.

Here’s a photo of some of us, and our windmills.

In the afternoon, Mr Adams visited our class.  Mr Adams is a doctor who mainly looks after babies, but sometimes children too.  He works for the NHS.  He works in a hospital in Kilmarnock.  He talked about how to be healthy by keeping fit, drinking water and eating a balanced diet.  Mr Adams said the best water for you is tap water because it’s fresh.  We thought that was quite interesting.  He also told us about the most common accident in the hospital, which is falling off a trampoline.  We all will be very careful on trampolines in the future! We were interested in what bone is the easiest to break, and Mr Adams told us it is the collarbone.  He told us the most common bone broken in one in your arm.  We really liked having Mr Adams in and asking him questions.  It was very, very, very interesting!