Wind Turnbine

Background:
The primary physics concepts involving wind turbines is the use of a generator. The generator runs due to the interaction between the coil of wire and the magnets.  The mechanical energy is the input and electrical energy is the output. Another primary concept is that in order for voltage to be induced the magnetic field needs to be changing. To create this change, we hot glued four magnets around a short wooden cylinder with alternating north and south poles. The purpose of the north and south poles is so that when the propellers spin the magnetic field around the coils would alternate thus inducing voltage.
Here are some images of my groups wind turbine.

Materials and Methods:
The materials needed to reproduce our design would be pipes, thin wire (to make coils), hot glue, 4 small magnets, short wooden cylinder, one long pipe and one short 90 degree pipe. The long pipe was the shaft that held up our wind turbine and the 90 degree pipe connected to the tope was were we placed our generator. For the Generator we attached 4 small magnets around a short wooden cylinder, and made two coils of wire that were placed on the north and south side of the generator. We left about two inches of wire outside of the coil so that we could attach the alligator clips to calculate the turbines voltage. The propellers were made out of cardboard and were attached to the generator by wooden sticks.

Here is an image of what our pipes looked like.

                

Results and Discussion:
What I learned form this assignment is that the more coils of wire and loops you have, more voltage will be induced. This idea goes back to the physics concept of primary and secondary sources. Although work is equal in the primary and secondary sources, more voltage can still be induced when there is more loops of coils. What was most difficult for us while constructing our turbine was attaching the magnets to the wooden cylinder, for the magnets were hard to pull apart. My advice to future physics students doing this project is to stick with 2 coils of wire, making 4 was difficult to do, and we would of spared a lot of time if we didn't spend it trying to figure out the 4 coils.

Here is a video of our wind Turbine working (creds to Mo Carlton for finishing the project)