Computational Wind Engineering: Simulation of Tornados

How do engineers turn something that is readily available, like wind, into energy? Scholars create a prototype of a wind turbine and attach it to a motor. They test out their prototypes and decide on their effectiveness. They also...

It's important to make sure houses can withstand winds. A hands-on activity has learners create a structure out of household materials. They use a fan to simulate hurricane-force winds to see if their structures can withstand the...

The Why? Files, provided by the University of Wisconsin provides a discussion of tornadoes and the environmental conditions that generate them. Includes some great pictures of the formations of the whirlwinds. Also includes a link to a...

Using their knowledge of physics, students will build a wind chime. Mathematical computations will be done to determine the length of the pipes.

Using a website simulation tool, students build on their understanding of random processes on networks to interact with the graph of a social network of individuals and simulate the spread of a disease. They decide which two individuals...

Watch three aerospace engineers explain how they work with experiments, simulations, and wind tunnels to build and improve things that fly on this career video. [4:03]

Students construct wind chimes using physics. In small groups they design and create wind chimes using a specific weights, number of notes, and keeping the cost under ten dollars.

Get lost at sea amid colorful ocean currents! Learners discover the patterns of movement and temperature in the North Atlantic's currents through a simulation, part of PBS's Weather and Climate series. The resource contains background...

Use these physlets, or small computational engines, to practice and improve your physics problem-solving capabilities.

Lift—it is about the wing's attack. Using a virtual wind tunnel, pupils investigate wing shape and angle of attack. Learners use worksheets to record their observations and to convert verbal relationships into mathematical equations in...