Helado
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Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 1794
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 Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:16 pm Post subject: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind |
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Read a few gutenberg books lately from the late 1800's, so just classics and the occassional random novel/ette. Picked up this one after seeing the kid on TDS.
| Quote: | | Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Discarded motor parts, PVC pipe, and an old bicycle wheel may be junk to most people, but in the inspired hands of William Kamkwamba, they are instruments of opportunity. Growing up amid famine and poverty in rural Malawi, wind was one of the few abundant resources available, and the inventive fourteen-year-old saw its energy as a way to power his dreams. "With a windmill, we'd finally release ourselves from the troubles of darkness and hunger," he realized. "A windmill meant more than just power, it was freedom." Despite the biting jeers of village skeptics, young William devoted himself to borrowed textbooks and salvage yards in pursuit of a device that could produce an "electric wind." The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is an inspiring story of an indomitable will that refused to bend to doubt or circumstance. When the world seemed to be against him, William Kamkwamba set out to change it. --Dave Callanan |
The book is really a series of stories and is more or less on his life growing up in Africa. The stories all tie into his experience and drive behind creating this windmill power generator. Some of the things he does (and they happen to work) are astounding. One such of these is when he decides he needs a transformer to bump his 12v power up to something normal AC devices could use. He has seen them illustrated in the books he had read at the library, but didn't understand the math. So he just starts wrapping coils and he somehow gets it close enough that the output voltage allows the devices to work. A combination of coming of age, dealing with poverty and famine, intuitiveness, and how a little bit of will power and hope can get something done makes a great book all the way through.
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