In the week 16th - 21st of March 2015 took place the fifth project meeting of the Comenius Project "Science Experiments on Renewable EnergieS" at De Goudse Waarden - Gouda, Netherlands. At this meeting had participated groups of teachers and pupils from all the partner schools: France (2 teachers - 5 pupils), Turkey (3 teachers - 4 pupils), Romania (3 teachers - 4 pupils),  Italy (2 teachers - 4 pupils), Lithuania (3 teachers - 5 pupils) and of course the hosting Netherlands teachers and pupils. The programme of the meeting for the four working days was extremely well organised, combining funny experiments session, Innovation Dock Rotterdam's workshops for learning about wind power with beautiful visits at the Kinderdijk and Amsterdam.

         In the first morning we were warmly welcomed by the headmaster of De Goudse Waarden and the school teachers. We started with the funny experiments session, all the teams presenting their work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we visited the school, which is a very nice and modern one and we had lunch together at the school's restaurant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

Then we split in three groups and visited Gouda Town, finishing our walking with a visit to a famous cookies factory, Punselie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the second day, we travel by coach to Rotterdam, to the Innovation Dock. Here we firstly learn about wind turbines, how they work and how they are built, especially about the Archimedes power solutions. This urban wind turbine has a design based on the theory of Archimedes, comprising three circular blades. Also, because of the 90 degrees rotation, it uses almost all the full amount of energy available in wind, proving high efficiency and low investment costs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most enjoying activity was the next one, building our own windmill. All the pupils were split in 3 groups, every group working at a phase of the windmill construction: electrical part, structure, cutting the blades and asambling all the parts. Then the groups rotated at the working benches until the windmill was ready for testing in the wind of an industrial ventilator. All the groups made a good job, finally 6 working windmills beeing hand made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     After this workshop activities we visited Kinderdijk, a place with a lot of beautiful windmills, that used to pump the water in the old times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Third day we visited two functional windmills in Gouda, and after the visit the pupils presented us at school different devices built by themselves in order to save energy in the house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Final day was dedicated to Amsterdam visit. Here we went to the Rijksmuseum, then in a boat trip on the canals and after we visited the NEMO Science Museum. Here we spent hours making interactive experiments on energy and not only.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have a last dinner together on the pancake boat and so it ended a beautiful project meeting. Thank again to the organisers of the meeting, to pupils and to the parents that took good care of our pupils.