Submissions that have been rejected by the Creativity Pool. - The Docks aren't necessarily the final destination, if a broken idea gets fixed it may travel to a more appropriate category.
By Derek Turner
#1086
The new cars have systems in place where braking recharges the batteries, and so on. But what about wind power. On the top of the car you could have a blade that would be about, say 20cm tall and would spin as the car moves. There would be a grate on the front and back of the car to allow air flow and prevent people injuring themselves on it and also to hide it from sight. As the car moves, the blade spins, creating electricity. Imagine what kind of electricity can be made when you are on the freeways!! You could almost make it so that a battery starts the car moving, and when it gets up to, say 50km/h (or 30miles/hour in USA) it would spin like crazy and there would be no need of any additional power until the car slows down again.

Reward: If it ever gets built, name the device after me.
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By Steve
#1094
My guess is that this wouldn't work because it collides with some basic law of physics. Most likely, the wind resistance produced by the spinning blade would always be bigger than the energy you could win.
By sm8b
#1166
I agree with the last post... You need to look at Newton's laws of thermodynamics - you cannot create energy. Any energy that it created would be offset by an increase in energy used by the car - due to the increase in air resistance. The only way it could work is going down hills, but the energy it created would be minimal. Good concept, but read up on Newton.
By dosefuk
#1553
Yep the last two posts are right if your idea worked you would have broke Newtons basic governing laws of motion and created a pupetual motion machine!!
By Kev
#2047
I had a similar idea to this years ago to help recharge batteries of electric cars. However to reduce the problem the other contributors are suggesting, why not have a hoizontal fan under the hood directly in front of the radiator. The friction is already present as you need an amount of air to cool the water in the radiator. All one needs to do is to lengthen the front of the car slightly to accomodate the fan. Side ventilators in the mudguards would increase the air flow to make the fan turn faster creating more torque to turn the alternator. :-B
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