Wave Power

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Wave Power!
Richard H. Audet, Ed.D. Middle Tennessee State
Univ. raudet_at_mtsu.edu
Student Materials
Teacher Materials
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Wave Power!Student Materials

• Stages of the Learning Cycle Exploration
• The Big One
• Engage
• Explore
• Explain
• Apply
• Assess
• STEM Connection

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Whats the biggest ocean wave ever?
That would be a wave 112 feet high (about as
tall as an 11 story building!) recorded in 1933
by crew members aboard the USS Ramapo in the
Pacific Ocean. Imagine the amount of energy this
wave contained and the type of destruction it
could have caused if it struck land. Sir Francis
Beaufort, an admiral in the British Navy,
invented a scale, now known as the Beaufort
scale, which runs from zero in calm weather to 12
for a hurricane. He developed the scale in 1805
to help sailors estimate the winds in the open
ocean by way of visual observations so that they
could determine how much sail to set. The
Beaufort Scale that youll be studying soon is
still used today.
Student Materials
Explore
Explain
Assess
Analyze
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Wave Power Facts

• Check out these Internet Resources to explore
  some amazing things about waves!
• National Geographic Wave Simulator
• How Stuff Works
• Savage Seas
• High Seas
• Welcome to Tsunami
• Towering Waves audio Podcast
• Be prepared to share five new discoveries that
  you made about waves.

Student Materials
Engage
Explain
Assess
Analyze
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Challenge Rating Wave Size

• Your teacher will divide the class into groups of
  four.
• Study the Beaufort Scale. What are five things
  that you discovered by carefully looking at this
  chart?
• Build a Beaufort Scale
• Each team will be given a bag full of cards. One
  kind includes pictures of different conditions of
  the sea, another has images of conditions on the
  land. Two other types are written descriptions of
  conditions on land and in the sea.
• Your teams challenge is to carefully examine the
  cards and match them to the twelve Force Levels
  on the Beaufort Scale. For example, if a picture
  shows leaves and small twigs moving and an
  extended flag, this would illustrate Force 3,
  gentle breeze conditions. Make your final
  decisions only after your group has carefully
  discussed the placement of the cards.

Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Analyze
Assess
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Beaufort Scale
Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Analyze
Assess
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Apply Your Understanding

• Of what value are charts such as the Beaufort
  Scale?
• Where does the energy found in waves come from?
• What are some other important things to know
  about waves other than their size?
• What happens to the height of a wave as it
  approaches the coast?
• How would you summarize in a single sentence what
  you discovered by completing this inquiry
  activity?

Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Explain
Assess
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STEM Connection Power from Waves

• Can the energy of ocean waves be used as a
  renewable energy resource? Visit the Alternative
  Energy News, Limpet Wave Machine, and Wave Power
  websites to investigate how wave energy is being
  converted into electricity.

Student Materials
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One Last Question

• One of the effects of Global Warming is that
  sea level is expected to rise. How could rising
  sea level and wave action combine to create
  serious problems along the American coastline?
  Record your answer in your notebook.

Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Explain
STEM
Analyze
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Teacher Materials Implementation

• The major activity is to build a Beaufort Scale
  by matching descriptions of land and sea
  conditions with cards that illustrate
  corresponding wind events on land and wave
  conditions in the sea.
• Each group of four students will be given a wave
  bag that contains cards numbered 1-12,
  descriptions of 12 land and sea conditions, 12
  pictures of waves, and 12 drawings of different
  wind conditions.
• Card sorts like this are excellent inquiry
  teaching strategies. Students are given some
  basic information to interpret. Then, they must
  use their observation and analytical skills to
  reach conclusions.
• The purpose of this activity is to provide
  students with the opportunity to apply science
  process skills like observation,
  inference-making, data analysis, etc. The
  activity also can be used activate students
  prior understanding of wave-related ideas such as
  kinetic energy, wave structure, relationship
  between wind speed and wave height, and impact of
  waves on man.

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Teacher Materials Standards

• TN Science Standards
• Physical Science
• GLE 0707.11.5 Compare and contrast the basic
  parts of a wave.
• GLE 0707.11.6 Investigate the types and
  fundamental properties of waves.
• GLE 0607.10.2 Analyze various types of energy
  transformations.
• Embedded Inquiry
• GLE 0607.Inq.2 Use appropriate tools and
  techniques to gather, organize, analyze, and
  interpret data.
• GLE 0607.Inq.3 Synthesize information to
  determine cause and effect relationships between
  evidence and explanations.
• Embedded Technology and Engineering
• GLE 0607.T/E.1 Explore how technology responds
  to social, political, and economic needs.

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Teacher Materials Standards

• TN Mathematics Standards
• GLE 0606.1.7 Recognize the historical development
  of mathematics, mathematics in context, and the
  connections between mathematics and the real
  world.
• 0606.1.7 Formulate questions, design studies, and
  collect real world data.
• SPI 0606.1.1 Make conjectures and predictions
  based on data.
• SPI 0706.5.1 Interpret and employ various graphs
  and charts to represent data.
• 0806.1.4 Relate data concepts to relevant
  concepts in the earth and space, life, and
  physical sciences

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Literacy Connection
From The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson Now I
hear the sea sounds about me the night high tide
is rising, swirling with a confused rush of
waters against the rocks below my study window.
Fog has come into the bay from the open sea, and
it lies over water and over the land's edge,
seeping back into the spruces and stealing softly
among the juniper and the bayberry. The
restive waters, the cold wet breath of the fog,
are of a world in which man is an uneasy
trespasser he punctuates the night with the
complaining groan and grunt of a foghorn, sensing
the power and menace of the sea. Hearing the
rising tide, I think how it is pressing also
against other shores I know - rising on a
southern beach where there is no fog, but a moon
edging all the waves with silver and touching the
wet sands with lambent sheen, and on a still more
distant shore sending its streaming currents
against the moonlit pinnacles and the dark caves
of the coral rock. Then in my thoughts these
shores, so different in their nature and in the
inhabitants they support, are made one by the
unifying touch of the sea. For the differences I
sense in this particular instant of time that is
mine are but the differences of a moment,
determined by our place in the stream of time and
in the long rhythms of the sea. Once this rocky
coast beneath me was a plain of sand then the
sea rose and found a new shoreline. And again in
some shadowy future the surf will have ground
these rocks to sand and will have returned the
coast to its earlier state. And so in my mind's
eye these coastal forms merge and blend in a
shifting, kaleidoscopic pattern in which there is
no finality, no ultimate and fixed reality -
earth becoming fluid as the sea itself.
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Teacher Materials Answers to Analysis Questions

• They enable people to connect wind speed with
  observable conditions on the land and the sea.
• The suns energy produces the wind. As the wind
  blows over a body of water, friction at the
  surface produces waves.
• The shape of waves, their speed, if there are any
  other types of waves in nature, what causes
  waves, etc.
• As wave approach the coast, they begin to be
  affected by the sea floor. Friction along the
  bottom causes different parts of the wave to move
  at different speeds. This makes waves grow
  taller. Eventually waves reach a height at which
  they are no longer stable. At this point, they
  fall over or break.
• Answers will vary.

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Resources and Credits

• Resources
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/understandin
  g/beaufort_scale.shtmlhttp//www.metoffice.gov.uk
  /education/secondary/students/beaufort.html
• http//www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/conditionblack/seas
  _flash.htmlhttp//science.howstuffworks.com/rogue-
  wave.htm
• http//www.pbs.org/wnet/savageseas/multimedia/wave
  machine.html
• http//www.nationalgeographic.com/volvooceanrace/i
  nteractives/waves/index.html
• http//www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.ht
  ml?action1t1islistfalseid4785303m4785489
• http//www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology
  /hydro/wave-power/
• http//www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/swfs/migrated/M
  ultimediaFiles/Live/Video/5352.swf
• http//www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/wave.htm
• Childrens Book
• Malone, R. (2007). Close to the wind the
  Beaufort scale. London Putnam Penguin.
• http//excelsiorfile.blogspot.com/2007/07/close-to
  -wind.html

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Teacher Materials
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Resources and Credits

• Images
• http//sxmprivateeye.com/files/images/waves.thumbn
  ail_0.jpg
• http//knowledge.allianz.com/nopi_downloads/images
  /lighthouse_waves_z.jpg
• http//www.beachpicturesbeachpictures.net/beach-pi
  cture-waves-people-Tydan.jpg
• http//www.wavesinc.com/images/Waves20Only.jpg
• http//www.mountwashington.org/education/center/ar
  cade/wind/beaufort_scale_tbp.gif
• http//www.theenvironmentalblog.org/2007/09/wave-p
  ower-set-for-oregon-coast.html
• http//www.alwayscleanwater.com/pic/pic/wave-power
  -large.jpg

Cover Page
Teacher Materials