KALAMAZOO – The way to learn how to make things, is to make things. While much of education today focuses on philosophical and theoretical discussions, an experimental class at Kalamazoo Valley Community College has been focusing on the hands-on processes involved in manufacturing, from design to fabrication. From January to May, Kalamazoo Gazette photographer Mark Bugnaski documented the class as it went from design to installation of its innovative wind turbine on the KVCC’s Texas Township campus. Mach 282 — short for the Machine 282 class — was experimental not only in its unique structure, which allowed students to design and create a product in 13-week class, but also in its focus: wind turbines, which tie into the college’s innovative Wind Energy Technology certificate program to train workers to install, maintain and service wind turbines. Enlarge Scott Harmsen | Kalamazoo Gazette KVCC Mach 282 students shape fiberglass cloth into a mold as they prepare to cast stator copper coils in resin. Students in the class chose to build the electric generator rather than purchase one for the wind turbine. Kalamazoo Gazette / Mark Bugnaski KVCC Wind Turbine class gallery (12 photos) Howard Carpenter, a KVCC machine tool and material science faculty member, sees the class as one more piece in the network of alternative energy studies KVCC is opening to students. In addition to the wind energy program, the college’s heating and ventilation program offers classes on renewable …

a. polar easterlies
b. westerlies
c. hadley cells
d. trade winds