Brick shithouse wind turbine.
There were many poor and rubbish school projects over the years from the cardboard food grater, to the made up household cleaner however I've decided to tell you about the good one. The Brick shithouse wind turbine!

In physics a small group of us were "encouraged" (forced) to do a special project in conjunction with some university students who were presumeably either trainee paedos or wanted to work with school kids for some other reason.

This project, for they were engineering students, was to design, build and test different wind turbines. The glorious conclusion of which would be to test them to destruction in the wind tunnels at City University in London.

The other geeks threw their efforts into studying propeller design, aerofoils, motor transfers etc etc and getting all technical about it.

I was more of a down to earth than that. Imagine if you will an archaelogical dig. The other team members would be the ones with little trowels and toothbrushes while I would be using the digger. Ok, perhaps I wouldn't get the same perfect results but I'd get the job done quicker.

So with this attitude to the project we set about designing and building. The others put loads of effort into making very complex propeller designs that would efficiently capture the most gentle of breezes, then stuck them on shitty little towers. Just like the real thing we see out in the countryside.

I however realised a very important fact. We're making small wood and cardboard models. They're going in a fucking big wind tunnel. There is an issue of scale here. In other words it doesn't matter how good your "sail" is because with that much wind a fucking brick would move, but if the damn thing won't stand up it's useless anyway.

So I set about building the most solid tower structure the world has ever seen*. I used hot glue, cross braced wood, metal tie rings and behold my 50cm tower could hold my weight! To this I fitted the most basic childs windmill inspired propeller attached to a basic electric motor and output meter.

The big day came I got quite a piss taking from all where what I had resembled the eiffel tower with a childrens windmill on it, christened the "tellytubbie" it was not pretty. Into the wind tunnel it sat along side the carefully engineered wonders. My skoda to their ferrari.

We cranked up the wind tunnel.... 5mph breeze increasing 1mph every 30 seconds.... after a couple of minutes one of the others began to resonate and vibrate. They were all producing electricity, some more than others. The vibrations grew larger in the first turbine until we could see it literally tearing from it's base then it collapsed and fell to the floor. One down!

By the time 25mph was reached only 3 turbines remained... one looking very poorly indeed as it shook like an wind swept excited Mohammed Ali in an open top porsche. It clung until it's propeller span so fast it lost a blade, the sudden unbalance flinging the rest of it to the side.

Still the wind speed crept up and up until the tell tale vibrations began in the other competing turbine. It rocked and swayed slowly tearing itself apart until spectacularly it just seemed to explode. The wind speed high enough that the pieces were flung to the far end of the room and pressed to the exit grate.

Only my tellytubbie windmill remained! The windmill span in a dizzying blur but the tower was solid as a rock. With an evil glint the tunnel operator cranked the speed up determined to destroy my work.... the wind reached 50mph.... 60mph....as it edged closer to 70mph there was a spark and the meter reading died. Yep, my windmill was now spinning so fast it produced more electricity than the meter would cope with and burnt it out. Eventually at 74mph my windmill "propeller" came off the tower and it was game over for my turbine but still my tower stood in a sea of debris of the other failed ones.

I was triumphant and being the twat I was back then I made sure the others knew it.

The teacher was a bullying northern tosser and thought I was thick as shit, perhap I was as most of what he said made no sense, but I can erect a very firm tower**!

To this day I still over engineer things but I have to say it works. Like the plate rack I built... that I could also do chin ups on!


* may not be true, but was pretty solid for wooden dowels and coat hangers!

** 2 years later I found out that while I could erect a firm tower, the teacher couldn't, which is why his wife left him.... for a woman!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 14 Aug 2009, 10:15, Reply)