Eco power for idiots
We were all angry because weeks before our idiot teacher had confessed to teaching us nothing on the GCSE Electronics syllabus. He had instead entered us for Mechanics, but failed to teach any of that either. I had to build something mechanical for the course work and had left one weekend to do it.

I decided to build a wind turbine for the "third world". Those poor puppies don't have good stuff, so I grabbed some shit form the shed. The turbine was a paint can cut in half vertically, the two sides mounted on a cut down tent pole with duct tape. For bearings I used old bike pedals with the treads still attached. It was all mounted in a rusty frame made form industrial size Meccano for building shelves. Sadly the only electric motor I could find generated zero volts when turned by the turbine, so I had to falsify some data.

I collected the piece of crap during the summer holiday, Dad wanted his shelving back. I was surprised with my B so quizzed the useless teacher. He knew it was crap and built over a weekend, I think I told him so much. He begrudgingly had to admit that the examiners comments complimented the third world application, the ultimate excuse for doing something really badly.
(mrdirtylegs, Fri 14 Aug 2009, 23:26, Reply)