Based on Kamkwamba’s memoir, what is one trait that best makes him a hero?
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind the Wind by William Kamkwamba.No more skipping breakfast; no more dropping out of school. With a windmill, we'd finally release ourselves from the troubles of darkness and hunger. In Malawi, the wind was one of the few consistent things given to us by God, blowing in the treetops day and night. A windmill meant more than just power, it was freedom.Standing there looking at this book, I decided I would build my own windmill. I'd never built anything like it before, but I knew if windmills existed on the cover of that book, it meant another person had built them. After looking at it that way, I felt confident I could build one, too.
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba.News of the machine had spread to the villages, and people were starting to arrive. The traders spotted it from their stalls and packed up their things. The truckers left their vehicles along the roads. Everyone walked into the valley, and now gathered in its shadow. I recognized these faces.
Why does the filmmaker decide to make a documentary about Kamkwamba’s story?
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba.I didn't have a drill, so I had to make my own. First I heated a long nail in the fire, then drove it through a half a maize cob, creating a handle. I placed the nail back on the coals until it became red hot, then used it to bore holes into both sets of plastic blades. I then wired them together. I didn't have any pliers, so I used two bicycle spokes to bend and tighten the wires on the blades.
A documentary is a film that
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba.News of the machine had spread to the villages, and people were starting to arrive. The traders spotted it from their stalls and packed up their things. The truckers left their vehicles along the roads. Everyone walked into the valley, and now gathered in its shadow. I recognized these faces. Some of these people had mocked me for months, and still they whispered, even laughed. More of them were coming. It was time.
Identify the reason that best explains why the director of Moving Windmills might have wanted to share William Kamkwamba’s story through film rather than through writing.
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba.After two more weeks of reading this book, I found the most fascinating chapter – the discussion of magnets. I knew about magnets because they were used to make the speakers in radios. I'd busted off a few and taken them to school as toys, moving little slivers of metal around through a piece of paper. But as I read further, I discovered that some magnets – called electromagnets – are used to generate electricity, specifically in simple motors, like those found in a radio.
Read the excerpt from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba.I continued to climb, slowly and assuredly, until I was facing the machine's crude frame. Its plastic arms were burned and blackened, its metal bones bolted and welded into place. I paused and studied the flecks of rust and paint, how they appeared against the fields and mountains beyond. Each piece told its own tale of discovery, of being lost and found in a time of hardship and fear. Finally together now, we were all being reborn.
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