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Flight by light

 Solar/Glow in the dark/windmill powered fire fly decoration for trees
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The artificial fire fly would be made of glow - in - the - dark material, have windmill shaped wings to rotate in the wind - creating a bit of power to light them and also have a solar panel. All three things might just make them glow a little come dark. Hang from trees around the garden.
—gizmo, May 07 2002

Wind resource evaluation http://www.awea.org/faq/basicwr.html
Wind power density measurement. [pottedstu, May 08 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

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       My design is smaller than a golf ball, ulness we are talking about midgets, I don't think they would hurt.
—gizmo, May 07 2002
   

       Maybe a neat spinoff of the technology would be wireless wind-powered christmas lights. I hate trying to get the strings unknotted every year.
—spartanica, May 07 2002
   

       (Does maths)   

       Apparently an average wind speed of 12.5 mph gives 200 Watts per square metre. I think this is quite high for average wind speed, and about the minimum for commercial wind power generators.   

       A golf-ball sized device would have cross-section of around 10 square centimetres, giving 0.2 W if all the wind's power could be converted to electricity.   

       A quick look at the Toshiba website suggests a typical red LED has power consumption of 0.075 W.   

       So with a suitably efficient generator, this *might* be possible, but someone with more knowledge of these things would need to check.
—pottedstu, May 08 2002
   

       presuming these were all-weather things, the solar panel would mean they could charge a battery all day, and only need the wind-power for supplementary power.   

       Which is just as well, as one red LED isn't really very bright at all - In fact, why not make them bright enough to be useful for more than decoration? My parent's garden path is dark and treacherous...
—yamahito, May 08 2002
   

       yamahito, solar garden path lighting is commonly available.   

       While searching about, I discovered a company that manufactures solar-charged pool/pond floating lights in different colo(u)rs. Nice idea. No pix, though, or I would have linked.
—waugsqueke, May 08 2002
   


 

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