Chemistry. Innovation. Led. Forgotten invention: the Rolamite. Kaden says: Ever hear about Rolamites? The only "basic mechanism" invented in the 20th century, they came out of Sandia Labs in the mid '60's.I've prototyped a few variations, and they're *damned* fascinating… almost like alien technology, or something that fell through that rip in the space-time continuum that leads to the parallel universe.A guy named Don Wilkes developed them, and they're pretty freakin' cool.
A couple of rollers tracked into a spring metal band, and Bob's yer uncle: stored energy with (no shit) frictionless constrained movement,I remember reading about them in PopSci when they were first developed, then promptly forgot about them, what with being 9 years old and all. Link Reader comment: Brandon says: here's a rolamite letter scale. I'd have to say it's probably the most beautiful scale i've ever seen. Hobby alternative energy production education and resources. Fis. Ten Times the Turbine. Sky SerpentCost to Develop: $250,000Time: 9 yearsPrototype | | | | | Product Today's largest wind farms are the size of small towns, made up of turbines 30 stories tall with blades the size of 747 wings.
Those behemoths produce a great deal of power, but manufacturing, transporting, and installing them is both expensive and difficult, and back orders are common as the industry grows by more than 40 percent a year. The solution, says inventor Doug Selsam, is to think smaller: Capture more power with less material by putting 2, 10, someday dozens of smaller rotors on the same shaft linked to the same generator. "The wind-turbine design out there right now is a thousand years old," Selsam points out, as he lets one of his carved wooden blades speed to a blur in the makeshift wind tunnel he's made of the alley behind his Fullerton, California, apartment. He brainstormed his multi-rotor approach in the early '80s, in a fluid-dynamics class at the University of California at Irvine. BLUE. Ready to Rock - a "condensed" version shown for the photo, with a 3/4 hp generator, held by the inventor, Doug Selsam.
Here are the blades of a 20 inch diameter turbine, that produces about half a kilowatt. They will be mounted on a shaft that projects for a long distance forward, and backward, at an angle from horizontal, so that the wind encounters the rotors like a stairway. Each additional rotor brings more power. The combined output from all these small rotors really adds up. This Turbine Utilizes Massive Parallel Wind Processing (MPWP) to maximize the wattage generated for a turbine of a given diameter. The New Turbine is flown in Tehachapi, mounted to a Tower by Brent Scheibel, of General Electric Wind and owner of WindTesting.com Well, it's up and running, with data being logged.
Brent Scheibel, WindTesting.com, His wife, Teri, with their dog Ezra, and Doug Selsam, windmill is seen in background Row after row of clean-turning turbine blades adorn the landscape... pretty cool. Windbelt Redux 21st Century Micro Power Generation - Instructabl. Build your own flat panel solar thermal collector - Instructable. The collector is made from corrugated plastic sheet, commonly used for making signs. It has multiple square channels running lengthwise from end to end. When I first saw this type of sheet I immediately thought, "Wow, this would make an excellent flat panel solar collector if only there was a way to pipe water through all those little channels.
" Several weeks later, a method of doing so occurred to me. If a slot of the right width is cut lengthwise in some ABS pipe (so the cross section looks like a "C") then this pipe can be fit over the end of the corrugated plastic. Because the whole collector is made of plastic, it is important that the temperature doesn't get too high or it will soften and possibly spring a leak. 80 degrees C (176 degrees F) is about the limit.