Don Quixode fight with windmills

Don Quixode fight with windmill is the most well known story from Don Quixode series.
One of the most famous stories in the book is Don Quixote’s fight with the windmills. He sees some windmills and thinks they are giants. When he rides to fight with them, he is knocked off his horse. Sancho tells him they are only windmills, but Don Quixote does not believe him. He is sure a magician changed windmills into the giants to hurt him. (quote from wikipedia)
However, when think of windmills, we always think it as a poetric symbol. Would wind turbine also do that? Because when I am reading some articles about wind turbines, one of the disadvantage of wind turbines mentioned is that they intrude the aesthetics of nature. For me, I think I like the aesthetics of wind turbines on hills.

Down Wind

It reminds me of a documentary I saw when I try to do the wind sculpture for Digital Fabrication class last semester. The documentary is “Down Wind”. I thought it would tell me how wind turbine works.
However, it is more about the wind turbines’ damage to the town. People’s house are under flickering light because of the huge wind turbines’ shadow would be projected to their house and the television signal would also be cut out at a regular frequency. People are getting angry about that and are moving out their home to escape those wind turbines.

Now it is better, those problems are fixed

At first it hits me because there is a relationship between wind turbine’s shadow and people’s life.
Later I learned about this wind flickering effect. There has been solid solutions to it.

I also see an article that the health problems and syndrome claimed caused by wind turbine are actually “nocebo effect”. That means Wind turbine syndrome has been characterized as pseudoscience.

Play with wind turbine

Later I saw another video that is a man playing with the shadow of the wind turbine. It is a more joyful relationship. People are not scary of wind turbine anymore.

Wind Energy – Another Gift from the Sun?

We always talk about solar panel and wind turbines as seperate objects. Then somehow form an idea that wind energy and sun energy are different kinds. So it is refreshing to me to realize that wind energy is also from sun. “Wind energy is simply a converted form of solar energy! The sun’s radiation warms different parts of the earth, oceans, and other bodies of water, at different rates. The night and day cycles make an obvious difference, but also, water and land absorb or reflect sunlight differently. The result of this uneven heating is atmospheric change.” quote from here

How wind turbines are reused?

It is loving to see this. “Rotterdam’s Wikado playground has found a use for old turbine blades”

can I use earth magnet to build huge wind turbine?

By learning that magnet is critical to wind turbine, I somehow think about the earth magnetic field and dream about if it is possible to build a huge wind turbine earth size near earth to generate electricity for earth human beings. Then I googled and get a “No” answer. I found this article that explain very well. “Can the Earth’s magnetic field be used to generate electricity?” Also the experiment mentioned is super interesting to me. The Space Tether Experiment: let the shuttle drag the tether across the Earth’s magnetic field to generate electricity Also this old NASA website looks super cool.