Questions: What Is Wind?

Question 1

You cannot see wind. How do you know it is blowing?

• A. You can hear the wind talking
• B. You can see and feel what it does -- it moves leaves, bends trees, and pushes against your skin
• C. Wind only happens at night, so you cannot know
• D. You can only know if someone tells you

Answer: (B)

Wind is invisible air in motion, but it pushes on everything it touches. You can feel it on your face, hear it in the trees, see flags waving and leaves tumbling. These clues tell you wind is blowing even though you cannot see the air itself.

Question 2

Wind is air that is moving.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

That is exactly what wind is. Air does not always stay still -- it moves from place to place. When you feel air moving past you, that is wind. A gentle movement is a breeze; a fast, strong movement is a gust or a gale.

Question 3

If you hold a pinwheel outside and it starts spinning, what does that tell you about the air?

Model answer: It tells you that the air is moving -- there is wind. The moving air pushes against the blades of the pinwheel and makes it spin. The faster the pinwheel spins, the stronger the wind is blowing.

Pinwheels, flags, and windsocks are all simple tools that make invisible wind visible by showing how air pushes on objects. This is how we observe something we cannot see directly.