BA 11

What did I learn this semester?

I learned that after ten years of not being in school, there is a lot that I don’t remember about it. When I was in high school it all seemed so easy. I never really tried in high school and I seemed to do well enough. School back then was more a social event then a learning event. My favorite classes were math and ceramics. Why? I didn’t really have to try in either of those classes. I just showed up and did well. I had friends with me in ceramics, and math everyone knew me as the kid to get answers from. I hated English. Sorry, that was an understatement. I really hated English. In fact I hated English so much, I just didn’t go. And for that I still need half an English credit to get my high school diploma. But that is then and this is now. I have learned that if I like what I am writing about, I like to write about it. I have horrible grammar, and my spelling skills are also on the bad side. But I read well, and type on the average to good skill level. I learned that my writing style doesn’t really go by a standard set of rules. I can’t write anything at all, until BAM! it is in my head and then it just comes out. Then it is just some refinement, not really revision.

Core classes were not really my strong point in high school, except for math. I was an “elective credits” kind of guy. I do remember my English classes, and how much I hated them. I think they were my least attended class of my high school career. Reading never really appealed to me until my early twenties; it was then that reading for fun became one of my favorite activities. Now that I am back in school I realize how much I took for granted in high school. The effort I put into a single assignment now leaves me wasted and drained. Ten years ago, I could throw an assignment together in a night. Back then I little care for how well I did. Everything came to me so easily that I felt I never really needed to try to do well. Today I do care how well I do and I try hard to make it show in my work.

I have been a long time out of school, a little over ten years now. In those years I lost a lot of the things that I took for granted. I remember being able to just have one look at a note card or book, and being able to recall it a week later on the quiz or test. This was standard procedure. That was the norm for most of my classes, except for English. English was the class I could genuinely call my bane. If it wasn’t for my loving mother, I would never have made it through any of those banes. Now, ten years later, I am in another English class. Unlike all the classes before it, in this class I actually care how I do. This change in mind set, from not caring to caring, has made all the difference in how I view this subject. This year I have learned that if you care how you do, and you actually like what you are doing, you do it well.

I never really liked English as a subject. I mean, I speak it well enough, and I can read it well enough that I don’t get lost when reading directions. So why should I have to learn to write it? This year has opened my eyes to why it is important to be able to write well. Before this year I have never liked to write and, therefore, I have never written well. Our class had writing assignments that I didn’t really enjoy, and it also had assignments that I really did enjoy. By having these two types of tasks, the enjoyable and not enjoyable, I learned that if you like what you are writing about, you write it well. I liked a few of the assignments this semester, and the quality of work on those assignments showed. This was the first semester that I have ever been complimented on a piece of my writing. That compliment means a lot to me.

This semester in English I think that I really have done well. Even though there were writing assignments that I didn’t really like, I still tried my hardest on them, and I did reasonably well on them. There were also the assignments that I really liked. These assignments opened my eyes on how much just liking something makes you do it better. With my eyes opened, I wrote a piece that was a first for me. I really enjoyed writing “Painful Looks.” Through that enjoyment my ability to write came out, and it was something that I never thought I could do. I have never been complimented on a paper, note, poem or anything else that I have ever written. The compliments I received about that paper made me feel good. And in feeling good, I have had a thought: maybe writing isn’t as bad as I thought.

Paper 3 (Final)

Wind. Pleasure? Power? Progress?

I.

As I sit on the floor of the airplane, I marvel at the thought of the Physics I am about use. A cloud is slowly moving past the open door in front of me. The air rushing into the airplane is cold and crisp. As I am adjusting the unfamiliar equipment, I see the ground about 13,000 feet below. My heart is keeping pace with the vibrating plane, as I prepare myself for the next step. A touch on the shoulder is the signal to go; with a deep breath I release myself from the plane and begin the descent through the forces that are pulling me toward the ground.

The pressure of the air passing around me is intense. From what I have been told, within ten seconds I am falling at my terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour (Ryan, 6-7). I fall for about a minute through the very force I am going to use to slow me down. When I fall to deployment altitude, I reach down and pull my cord. After about a five second delay my parachute opens and catches the air pressure moving past me; it feels like I am pulled to a complete stop. The only way I know I am still falling is by looking at the ground that is getting closer, albeit much more slowly. I reach up and grab the steering toggles to control the rest of my descent.

A few minutes later I am back on the ground, adrenaline pumping and blood racing in my veins. I take a moment to collect myself; as I do so I think about how great it is to live in a time when we can harness the air we breath, and use it for our pleasure and purposes. I then start to collect my parachute which is lying on the ground behind me. As I am rolling up the cords I begin to wonder what other uses we have for wind.

II.

The day is bright and sunny, and I am looking over my holdings for any problems that may be happening. As I walk across my land I see that my corn fields are healthy and green. I am proud of how I have made them grow from a single small field, to a series of larger fields that produce much more corn. I have worked hard on this farm, but now most of my work is done by my great wind mills.

My mills face the direction from which the strong winds blow from June through September. I have built them with vertical sails enclosed on two sides, so the wind is caught and channeled through the sails. I use my mills for two purposes. I have mills that pump water for my crops, and I have mills that grind the corn into meal (Woelfle 14). Both of these operations are very important to the function of my farm. Water is scarce during the dry seasons in my land, so I pump the water up from wells deep beneath the surface of the earth. By channeling the water to the different fields, I have been able to grow crops even in the hottest summers. I used to have my family spend days grinding the corn manually, and as the farm grew we had to spend even more time. The time and money I save from not having to grind the corn manually, and not have to pay others to grind it for me, is why I have been able to build this farm to what it is in my life time. All this progress is because of my windmills.

As I finish my rounds of my holdings, I come upon a cart loaded with meal on its way to the market. I stop the driver and open one of the bags of meal; I grab a handful and let it fall through my fingers back into the bag. With a smile I reseal the bag and let the driver leave. As I watch the driver go down the road, I wonder where that meal is going to end up.

III.

As I walk down the starboard side of my ship, eating this morning’s cornbread breakfast, I take delight in seeing everything in order. I am thinking about the cargo I have stowed below. We have a full load we are taking up the coast to trade in port. We’re on a tight schedule, but I believe we will be fine. Trade has been good these years, and it is only getting better.

I am captain of an ardent class ship called Nefertiti. This was originally made as a war vessel, also known as a heavy frigate. We have a three mast configuration, with seven sails. We are sea worthy and quick enough to be efficient. We were originally setup with 131 ft. long gun-decks, equipped  with twenty-six 24-pounders, twenty-six 18-pounders, and a dozen 9-pounder chase guns. We have been cut back to one gun-deck consisting thirty 24-pound guns and a few 9-pound chase guns. This has made more room for cargo and crew to run the ship better (Woodman 86-89).

When I reach the quarterdeck I take a look upward and see the sails full of the force that drives us. We are carried along by an invisible power that catches our sails and moves us at a steady pace. I am always impressed with how efficiently the wind can move this heavy ship. Unlike a horse or mule driven cart, the wind that carries us does not ever tire. We move onward day and night, always with wind in our sails. As I start back up the port side of the ship, I imagine other uses for this wind.

IV.

I reach the base of the wind turbine and look skyward. I am amazed at the sight that I see. The wind turbine stands over two hundred feet tall. Its blades are about thirty meters long each, and they are colored gray to match the clouds. They rotate ten to twenty-two times per minute. The tower the turbine sits on is tubular, and required a large crane and skilled operator to install it. I think that this site is beautiful, even though the neighboring communities don’t like the skyline with a turbine in it (Wikipedia).

As I start to climb the tower I am thinking about how big these turbines really are. I am working on a mid-sized one, but I have heard of some monster sized sites in Germany. One of these was made by the company Enercon, model number is the E-126. That turbine makes about 6MW of electricity, and has an overall height of 198 meters. That’s twice as large as the one I am climbing now. Its blades have a diameter of 126 meters. The next largest site is also in Germany, and is made by REpower. It has an overall height of 183 meters and blade diameter of 126, and it delivers up to 5MW of electricity (Wikipedia). Amazing!

Once at the top of the tower I stop and look at the surrounding countryside from this height. It is really quite beautiful, and this brings another thought to me. There are wind turbines being built all over the world. Anywhere there is wind they are popping up like flowers in well tended gardens. While Germany and the United States are the current leaders in wind produced energy, they are not alone. Spain, India, China, Belgium, Brazil, Japan, Poland, Australia, and Canada are also on the list (Associated Content). According to Wikipedia, we have turbines close to the north and south poles that are powering research sites in those locations (Wikipedia)

Now that I am performing some of the routine maintenance on the turbine in my care, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds for the wind industry. There has been talk that the government would like to satisfy 20% of America’s energy needs, with wind energy by 2030. Although the 2008 turbine installations are making 8,358 MW of electricity, we still have a long way to go to reach that goal (U.S. DOE 1-3).

As I finish with my maintenance, and start my climb down, I think how glad I am to already be in this growing field. By reaching for the goal of 20% of our energy being wind energy, we are going to create about 500,000 jobs by 2030. In 2008 alone, 55 facilities became involved with wind related technologies, and the American Wind Energy Association reported that this field already has about 85,000 jobs. Currently $17 billion was brought into the U.S. Economy by the expansions in wind facilities and technology (U.S. DOE 1-3).

These facts make me smile, knowing that the field in which I’ve chosen to work is going to be around for a long time. It also makes me happy that not just some of us, but the whole world is catching on and trying to make the earth a better, cleaner place.

Works Cited

• Ryan, Pat. Sky Surfing. Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press 1998
• Woelfle, Gretchen. The wind at work. Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press
• Woodman, Richard. The History Of The Ship. New York: Conway Maritime Press
• “Wind Energy Statistics.” Associated Content. February 10, 2009. May 2, 2009 <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1443491/wind_power_statistics.html?cat=15>
• “Wind Turbine” Wikipedia April 30, 2009. May 2, 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbines
• Wind Power Today. U.S. Department of Energy, 2009 <http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/44889.pdf>