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www.picoturbine.com has plans for a wonderful little generator that can
light an LED.  The kit is very pricy, compared to the components alone,
but your time rounding up the components and winding coils costs
something, too.  It's much too delicate for exhibit use as is, but it
might be useful for classes and we have used it successfully in a demo
booth at a local earth day street fair.  The concept could be modified
with more robust materials (plastics or metal instead of cardboard and
paper) to be much more durable. We may well end up modifying it in this
way to use as an exhibit in conjunction with our full-sized wind
turbine.  It would be important not to make it too heavy, as it is very
cool that you can light the LED just by blowing on the sails.

They also have plans for much bigger wind turbine that could light a
regular bulb - look on the site for the Beta plans.

Dave

David L. Smith, Ph.D.
Director of Professional Development
Da Vinci Discovery Center, Allentown, PA 
http://www.davinci-center.org
"Who will pick up where Leonardo left off?"

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