A shark inspired power turbine

I love nature inspired engineering…

The basking shark, with its five foot jaw, is one of the most ferocious looking critters that ever swam the sea. However, it’s pretty much harmless, just filtering out tiny bits and leaving idle dippers and their water wings alone. This is what served as the inspiration for Anthony Reale, who turned that gaping maw into Strait Power.

It’s effectively a double-nozzle that fits around a hydro turbine or two, turning the flow of water into electrical power, boosting the efficiency of the turbine by creating areas of high pressure ahead and low pressure behind, as visualized above. The result was a 40 percent boost in efficiency — and some soggy jeans, as you can see in the videos below. The first gives a quick overview, the second an uber-detailed discussion of the development from start to finish. Choose your path.

via Engadget.

How green are your PCs?

Here’s an interesting write up about the advantages of using new power efficient pc’s over old systems (especially for the old systems that are now serving as a home server on 24hrs a day)…

When running the old Celeron board needs about 85-90W, giving a total with monitor around 110W. But what does it use in sleep mode? 10W ? 15W ?   No. 35W. I thought I’d missed a decimal point on the meter, but it is thirty five watts. The atom uses less power awake than the old machine uses when it is sleeping.

Definitely worth reading further on James O’Neill’s Blog.

Energy saving bulbs, detangled

Bless English design company Hulger, for they have unraveled those horribly twisted contraptions that are low-energy, long-life green lightbulbs. This is Plumen 001, which actually looks so good on its own that you will not need a shade for it.

via At Last, Someone Untangled Those Horrible Low-Consumption Light Bulbs.

Smart PowerCurl MacBook travel accessory

This is a great idea for any mac laptop owners

Designed by the Quirky community and Apple enthusiasts in just 24 hours, the Quirky PowerCurl is a clip-on cord wrap for Apple’s 45W, 60W, 85W, and older rectangular 85W MagSafe Power Adapter. The Curl, as we like to call it, makes it easy to unplug and pack up quickly without having to untangle your extension cords the next time you set up shop.

via quirky