🚀 Inventions and machines 🔧 Machines and tools

Windmills

📖 In short

A windmill is a machine powered by the wind. It has big arms or blades that turn when the wind blows, driving parts that grind grain or pump water. Today huge modern windmills called wind turbines make clean electricity.

🤩 Did you know?

One wind turbine can produce more than 2 megawatts of electricity.
Some turbine blades are longer than a big airplane.
Wind energy is renewable and never runs out.
A windmill turns to face the wind to catch as much force as possible.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Old windmills

People have used windmills for more than a thousand years. Long ago Persia had windmills with arms that turned horizontally around an upright shaft to grind grain.

🔍 Dutch windmills

The Netherlands has beautiful old windmills with big arms of cloth and wood that pumped water from the low land into canals, protecting the country from flooding.

💡 Wind turbines

A modern wind turbine is a very tall tower with three long blades at the top. When the wind turns them, they drive a generator that makes electricity, with no smoke or pollution.