Gizmodo Australia » turbines

ATV Powered By A Jet Engine Could Be Batman’s Golf Cart

Mark Wilson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:40:00 +0000

Batman normally likes to stretch his legs and have trunkspace for a few accidental dead bodies. But he might pilot an ATV powered by a jet engine on a weekend at the links.

John Carnett modded brand new Polaris RZR 2-seater ATV with a grey market, 40-year-old turbine. The result is a 114db joystick-driven vehicle that spews out 1300°F exhaust to achieve around 100kph. And it sounds glorious.

Our only regret is that Carnett was too sane to take his jet ATV over any sweet jumps. Give him time, though. A guy who builds stuff like this has to be slipping a bit. [PopSci]

Mathmos Glowing Wind Lights Probably Best For Breezier Locales

Kit Eaton — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:01:51 +0000

Mathmos‘ eight-inch tall windlights are pretty simple—just a generator, 2.4-inch propeller and two LED lights—but that doesn’t stop them from having their own cute, glowing eco-charm. Basically when the wind blows strongly enough, they light up: dot them about your garden and you’d have a great display, but only if the wind is blowing. If you’re in London, Jason Bruges Studio has arranged hundreds of them into a 45-foot high Aeolian Tower scultpure at the Southbank which is showing until November 16th. But if you want just one, it’ll cost you around $US18. [Technabob]

Monster Turbine In-Ear Headphones Lightning Review (Lots of Bang For Your Buck)

Benny Goldman — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:00:01 +0000

The Gadget: Monster’s Turbine “In-Ear Speakers”, their first ear buds and followup to the Beats By Dre cans, they claim audiophile quality for a reasonable price.

The Price: $US150

The Verdict: The Turbines are great, especially given the sub-$US200 price point. They sound every bit as good as more expensive Shures, with clean, deep bass and crisp, clear mids and highs. They’re also the loudest pair of ear buds I’ve come across, blasting my iPhone and laptop to volumes I didn’t know existed, without ever getting noisy.

In fact, the worst thing about the Turbines was discovering how crappy most of my MP3 files really sound. Songs purchased from iTunes or ripped from CD were fine, I was able to pick out each instrument and hear things I normally couldn’t with lesser headphones, but files I’ve obtained with less reliable quality sounded like absolute garbage—the mix was all wrong, and the noise almost gave me a headache.

Also, by this point I expect most ear buds in this range to include a microphone/toggle switch, and was disappointed that these don’t. On the plus side, they generously come with five sets of tips so there is definitely a size that will fit your ears. All in all, the Turbines are a nice entry into the in-ear headphone arena by Monster, and fantastic sound quality for the price—just make sure your music lives up to their high standards. [Monster]

World’s First Tidal Turbine Farms to Power 40,000 Scottish Homes (or Pubs)

John Herrman — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Following the apparent success of SeaGen, a small deployment of tidal turbines of the coast of Northern Ireland, Scottish Power is seeking approval for plans to build two farms of 20 30-metre, err, watermills promising a steady power supply for up to 40,000 homes. As with the previous example of tidal power generation, the most obvious problems have been pretty much addressed: fish, seals, and cryptozoological specimens (probably) won’t be harmed by the slow-spinning blades, and shipping routes won’t be affected on account of the depth of the deployment. Scottish Power claims that the project should be completed in about three years. Click the above image for a explanatory video. [BBC via CleanTechnica]

Queen of England Buying the World’s Largest Wind Turbine

Sean Fallon — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0000

We don’t know how much it cost her, but word is that the Queen of England has put down some mega-bucks to buy the world’s largest wind turbine. The 10-megawatt monster machine built by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California will have a wingspan larger than two soccer fields and will stand 574 feet tall when completed. The windmill is expected to displace two million barrels of oil as well as 724,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime. It will also serve as the flagship for Clipper’s Britannia Project, an effort to produce massive new turbines on deep-sea floating platforms. If all goes as planned, the Queen’s windmill will light up thousands of British homes starting in 2012. [CNN]

Wind Turbines Murdering Bats By Popping Their Lungs

John Mahoney — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:00:00 +0000

On the list of ways to go, having your lungs explode is definitely on the gnarlier side. Too bad for bats in treehugging locales, though, because that’s what’s happening to them, due to a pretty serious error with their awesome echolcation systems crossing with the seemingly benign forces of Bernoulli’s principle put into motion by the turbines’ huge spinning blades. Ouch all around.

What happens is the bats’ internal echolocation, which tracks movement, attracts them to the blades of wind turbines, which presents another fairly obvious problem. But a University of Calgary researcher, puzzled by bats dying off in large numbers around wind farms in southern Alberta has found that those that don’t get cut down by the blades (surprisingly only 50%) are actually dying from exploded lungs, or barotrauma; the low pressure areas around the spinning rotors, as explained by our friend Bernoulli, cause the bats’ tiny air sacs to burst. Even those that do get knocked out of the sky by the blades have their lungs popped beforehand–of the 188 dead bats in the study, 90% had barotrauma as the cause of death.

I’m thinking this is going to have to remain one of those problems without an immediate solution. Hopefully the bats will evolve to realise that the massive spinning turbine blades do not equal a tasty insectoid meal. [New Scientist, Photo: Zeusandhera]

Student Develops Cheap Power Turbine For Developing Nations

Matt Hickey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:20:05 +0000

It’s one thing to tinker in your garage to restore that old gas-guzzling muscle car that you think will get you some action. It’s something entirely different to invent an electricity-generating wind turbine out of scrap parts that could revolutionise personal power in developing nations, especially if you’re in college. Max Robinson has done just that, designing a turbine out of spare parts that costs less than US$40 to build out of readily available parts and can power a home’s lighting for up to two and a half days or a radio for over a day. No word on how long an OLPC would last. [Daily Mail]

Aespironics Drug Inhaler Should Fit in Wallet, Be Cheap, Effective

Kit Eaton — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:15:00 +0000

An Israeli company, Aespironics, is trying a new approach in re-designing an old faithful drug delivery system: the inhaler. They’ve teamed up with an expert in drug atomisation and a wind turbine researcher, and have come up with a breath-activated, turbine-assisted design that should be slim, cheap and easy to produce, and deliver dry drugs to the users lungs without leaving them sticking inside the mouth. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? Particularly when you consider the implications of a simple, compact and cheap dispenser for aiding ill people in the developing world. The team is planning tests for the year end, and thinks a product could be on the market within three years. If it’s an inhaler slim enough to fit in a wallet, I’ll take one soon, please: lugging around a conventional one is annoying. [I21c via Medgadget]

Rock Port, Missouri, is First US City to Generate All Its Electricity From Wind Turbines

Adrian Covert — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:20:00 +0000

(Photo by Steve Morse)
Not to be outdone by those crazy Danish bastards out on the isle of Samso, Science Daily reports an equally crazy group of Missourian bastards in Rock Port now generate all their electricity using wind turbines. Rock Port went completely wind-powered last week, making use of the 75 wind turbines spread out across three Missouri counties, and local experts are excited about the potential for wind power throughout the state. However, PopSci thinks it won’t be so easy to make this a widespread trend in the US.

For starters, Rock Port only has 1300 residents, which is much easier to power using renewable energy than most places. Wind power currently accounts for 1% of total power consumption, and the US government only sees it providing around 20% of the power needed to run the country in the future. And even for that to happen, turbines need to become dramatically more efficient. But I’m not trying to rain on Rock Port’s parade (which I’m sure every eco-freak would have gathered for, had it not added to their carbon footprint). [Science Daily via Popular Science]

Lunatics Base-Jumping Off Giant Wind Turbines Have More Guts Than We Do

Matt Buchanan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:40:00 +0000

The idea of diving out of an aeroplane with essentially just a thin envelope of fabric protecting me from splattering my organs all over concrete like postmodern art makes me want to pee myself. Yet somehow jumping off a giant, bird-blending propeller blade, almost thirty stories up, makes me want to poop myself too. And that’s exactly what these insane base jumpers do, on video no less.

I do jump off of my bed sometimes though, that counts for something, right? [Groovy Green via Huffington Post]