How Rain Wears Down Europe's Wind Turbines
In the app: the whole story at your level, listening, the quiz and the word cards.
The same story at six levels
How the first sentence reads at every level, from A1 to C2.
- A1
AIRE is a group studying wind turbines.
- A2
A wind turbine makes electricity from wind.
- B1
The tips of wind turbine blades can reach speeds of 360 km/h.
- B2
The tips of wind turbine blades can reach speeds of 360 km/h.
- C1
The tips of wind turbine blades can reach speeds of 360 km/h, causing raindrops to gradually erode their leading edges and cut power output.
- C2
When the tip of a wind turbine blade hits 360 km/h, an ordinary raindrop ceases to be benign.
Key words
Words from the B1 text, with their meaning.
- blade
- the flat, wide part of a machine that turns to move air or water
- gradually
- slowly, over a long period of time
- erosion
- the slow damage to a surface caused by wind, water, or weather
- output
- the amount of energy or goods produced by a machine or person
- estimate
- to guess the size, cost, or amount of something using the information you have
- uncertainty
- a situation in which something is not known or not sure
Rewritten with AI from facts reported by Horizon, the EU Research and Innovation Magazine. Read the original for the full report.