For the past few weeks, my partner and I worked on a turbine for an online competition called KidWind. Every month they pick a turbine they like, and the students from that school get $100 for their school. We designed the blades for our turbine, mounted them to a hub, and measured it's voltage. Our team name is Something Clever 2.0 (because we messed up the description on our first one) and we measured 1.07 volts of energy with a 100 resistor value. We used turbine generator B1 from KidWind.org, and our wind speed was 4 meters per second. A picture of our turbine:
Our inspiration for this blade design was partly given to us by the leaves outside, and the blades on the fan we were using for our test dummy turbines. We used a strong cardboard-like material that catches enough wind to produce 1.07 volts of energy and does not weigh it down too much. We also colored it.
Overall I think this project was relatively interesting and a bit useful if we want to be turbine mechanics. It taught us about how motors work and some basic electricity and power-generating.
