Wind: A blog about a turbine

 WIND TURBINE 101

This blog post demonstrates key concepts that one must know in order to build a model wind turbine. Keep in mind, this lab is not easy but once it is completed, its pretty cool and a lot of physics is learned. 

Primary Concepts:

The primary physics concepts a person would need to know in order to comprehend how my turbine is supposed to work are:

1.  How a generator works
   A generator functions with mechanical energy being put into it and at the end electrical energy is the output. A generator is made of coils of wire and magnets which is why our generator which was a 2 coil generator is placed the way it is shown in the picture. The main concept that shows how this turbine works is electromagnetic induction. 
2. Also, based on the conservation of energy, I learned that energy is not created or destroyed. Rather, it changes into a different form, like heat. So the when the wind turbine works, there is energy being produced which makes it spin, but the energy is not lost at all.
3. Rotational inertia is another concept that is essential in this lab because we know that inertia is the property of an object to resist changes in motion. But we also know about rotational inertia which is a type of inertia that depends on the distribution of mass and also the property of an object to resist changes in the spin. If there is more rotational inertia it is harder to spin, if there is less, it is easier to spin. When there is a small rotational inertia, the turbine works faster but when there is a larger rotational inertia, the wind turbine might respond a little late. ie: the blades.
   
   
   The way a generator works is already included in the first part. but to elaborate a little more on the relationship between the coils of wire and the magnets is that the coils must be tightly compact so that the small magnets can feel a force and cause the turbine to spin. The coils of wire are meant to be opposite from each other in a vertical direction. This is because all the charges in the wires have to be moving the same way similar to the motor blog that I posted in the past few weeks.
   Materials + Methods:
   -coils of wire
   -black tape
   -four small magnets
   -long 2'' PVC pipe
   -tee PVC pipe
   
    -cardboard (for blades)
   -small wooden circles to connect everything
   If you look at the images below, you will be able to recreate this project in as little as an hour or two.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

 






Results:
Our voltage was about 4.8 volts. The factors that I think influenced our turbine was the thickness of the coil or possibly what type of generator we created. Maybe if the coils of wire were wrapped more compact, it would have worked better. Also, the amount of magnets makes a difference; in our case we used four but an issue that we ran into was that while trying to hot glue north poles opposite from each other and south poles opposite from each other, leaving north and south poles adjacent to each other, the magnets kept on being attracted wanting to stick together. It took us many tries to make sure they didn't move and a lot of hot glue. Something else that worked was using a tee PVC pipe, because originally we planned on using an elbow PVC pipe and now realized that that would not have worked. Also while building your model, you must make sure that the blades are pretty equivalent to the size of your tower because if they are two big the fan will not do anything to help. Something I would have done differently is to include a wooden base instead of just holding our PVC pipe up the entire time.