Tag: Science

Micro Wind Turbines

Mini wind turbinesIn urban settings many times it just isn’t practical to install wind turbines in order to harness the energy of the wind. The buildings may not be able to support a large generator or it might be that there just isn’t enough wind. Strange as that sounds, wind turbines won’t work if the wind is too slow. The blades won’t turn. Simple as that. They need at least 20mph winds to be any good. What is an eco conscious urban dweller to do?
The Motorwind might be an answer to some of your power needs. It’s a bank of turbine blades (apx 10" in dia) that are geared together that will generate power in winds of only 7mph (4m/s). That’s a light breeze, just a 3 on the Beaufort scale, and is pretty common. You should be able to get that from just the convection currents coming off from all the cement in the car park next to your office. With one of these Motorwind turbine setups you can charge batteries and power devices directly or with an AC inverter. All in all a good way to get some work out of a nice spring breeze.

The picture below is of the first micro-turbine array set up in Hong Kong. It includes 40 turbines, which has daily production capacity of 960W/h with average wind speeds of 5.5 m/s. This installation was made in November, 2006, and is large enough to power all of the lights in the apartment below.

[via neat-o-rama]
MotorWave

GFS-UAV N-02 ‘UFO’ Takes to the Sky

GFS-UAV N-01AAt first glance this flying craft looks like a simple ducted fan with a weird skirt under it. Fancy hovercraft? Kind of. In reality the skirt has no air flowing through it only over it. Something called the ‘Coanda effect‘(wiki) causes the air to ‘stick’ to the outside of the craft and in effect creates an inside out hovercraft. The high efficiency electric motor in the top housing forces air to flow over the outside of the main body to create lift. The torque of the motor and the spin created by the prop wash are countered by the fins that ring the mid section and the direction is controlled by the four lower flaps. The platform is quite stable and looks to be a very good platform for just about any UAV application.

[via MAKE]
The GFS-UAV N-02 is now ready to do tests flights

Solar Storm Warning, Head For The Basement!

Very cool. I’ll have to load the camera up with some nice film so I can take photos of the Northern lights. Too bad I have to wait until 2010 or 2012.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming–the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

I wonder if that in the next few years as the solar activity peaks the weather will be effected. Anyone remember the news about the coming ice age back in the 70’s? I do know that the ham radio guys will be enjoying it. Solar Max makes for good DX’ing.

[via spottings]
NASA – Solar Storm Warning

The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe

The Skeptic Guide to the UniverseIf critical thinking is your cup of tea then this podcast is just for you. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a free weekly podcast sponsored by the New England Skeptical Society that  is dedicated to the examination of paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims with science and reason.  Scientific process and peer review are the watch words of the day on this site! Even better, once in a while the famous James Randi makes a guest appearance on the show.

The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe

Alice: Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for Kids

AliceI was reading my eWeek today and say this cool article talking about a way to teach programming to kids. The idea is that you have this rich visual 3D world that you program the objects in it to move and interact. I took a look at it and discovered just that, it talks about methods, objects, and other tenants of modern programming . Man, I wished I would have had this when I was a kid. It would have made learning BASIC a lot simpler.
Once the students get comfortable with the interface they will be producing animated movies in no time at all. They can draw from a library rich in 3D models like dragons, faeries, spaceships, buildings. There is also a way to import models from 3D Studio Max using a third party utility. There is also a collaboration with the popular game ‘The Sims‘  to add a much more fluid look and feel to the character animations. I hope that when this happens Alice will stay free to anyone that wants to download it. My kids are both fans of the Sims and I know that this would at least give them a clue as to what computer programming is like. Even if you don’t have kids but would like to know more of how all this software stuff works you should download it and give it a try. It’s written in Java so it will work on both PC and Mac.

Alice: Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for the WWW

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records

This kind of thing is just flat out cool.

The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.

In a nutshell:

When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records