Fan video of August 13, 2011, Sugarland Concert stage collapse at Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, IN, USA.
Catastrophe struck the Indiana State Fair on Saturday, where a 60mph gust of wind brought down the concert stage where the country music duo Sugarland was about to appear.
With the stage coverings acting as an enormous sail, the lighting grid and supporting scaffolding collapsed under the wind’s force, killing at least five people and injuring about 40.
Warning: The video above is the clearest view of the stage collapse yet available on YouTube, and is disturbing to watch.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Marion County coroner’s office identified the dead as Tammy Vandam, 42, of Wanatah; Glenn Goodrich, 49, of Indianapolis; Alina Bigjohny, 23, of Fort Wayne; Christina Santiago, 29, of Chicago; and Nathan Byrd, 51, of Indianapolis, who died overnight.
Our sympathy goes out to the victims of this tragic accident.
By Brian Palmer From: http://www.slate.com/
The federal government has green-lighted the nation's first offshore wind farm, to be built off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass. Opponents claim that 130 white, three-bladed turbines will detract from the natural beauty of Nantucket Sound. Why do all modern windmills look the same?
So they're unobtrusive. A windmill's noise is directly proportional to the speed of its rotor tips. Two-bladed turbines have to spin faster than their three-bladed competitors to generate the same amount of energy. As a result, the whooshing sound they emit is somewhat louder. Two-bladed windmills would be a sensible choice for a remote, offshore wind farm like the one in Cape Cod, since they're just as efficient as the three-bladed models and cheaper to produce. But manufacturers—who cater to the densely populated and wind-power-oriented countries of Europe—have switched almost exclusively to producing the latter.
The placement of rotors relative to the tower is also a design controversy with acoustics implications. The downwind design, with the tower between the blades and the wind, is more structurally sound. (Think of a pinwheel: If you don't grip it tightly, it will tend to rotate into the downwind position.) The problem is that the tower creates a dead spot for airflow, which stresses the spinning rotors and generates a repetitive whop that can carry for miles. Right now, most manufacturers favor the upwind layout.
The white paint, which many localities require by ordinance, is also a matter of aesthetics. City planners seem to think white windmills are less of an eyesore. The white also reflects sunlight, which minimizes expansion and cracking of the gel coat that protects the fiberglass composite rotors. Not all windmills are white, though. Some Midwestern turbines are yellow to match the grain. (This doesn't work so well in the spring, when the crops are green.) German windmills are sometimes painted dark green at the bottom to blend into the forest. European rotors usually have a red stripe to make them visible to aircraft. Engineers once tried painting the rotors black to absorb sunlight and prevent icing, but it didn't seem to help much.
Hollow, tubular towers have vanquished the old girder design, because they discourage birds from landing on them. (Birds and windmills don't mix.) The tubes are also favored by construction crews, who can climb up a tower to repair it from the inside, protected from the elements.
The biggest design question for most engineers is rotor length. The energy a windmill generates is proportional to the area of the rotors' circular sweep, so energy increases proportionally to the square of the blade length. However, the volume of the rotor, which determines the cost, is proportional to the cube of the length, and increases faster than energy production. As we get better at materials engineering, the rotors will get longer. But at any given time the arms of a windmill will be built out to the length that maximizes energy return relative to the cost of production. The rotors on modern windmills are sometimes as much as 200 feet long. As such, transportation can also be a problem.
Explainer thanks Douglas E. Adams of the Purdue Energy Center, Scott Larwood of the University of the Pacific, James Manwell of the University of Massachusetts Renewable Energy Research Laboratory, and Jonathan Naughton of the University of Wyoming Wind Energy Research Center.
110mph Winds On Ski Lift - Watch more Funny Videos A bunch of skiers get hit with a 110mph micro burst wind while up on a ski lift in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
scientificamerican.com — One small island in Denmark is technically 100 percent powered by sustainable sources of energy. Could the experiment succeed anywhere else?
Daniel Buren is French conceptual artist born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
He is well known artist and he already did numerous significant artworks. He is famous by his 3.000 m² sculpture “Les Deux Plateaux” in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris. The latest artwork that is made by Daniel Buren is his ‘beach art’ that was performed in Den Haan, Belgium. His beach artwork is pretty different and unique in it’s own way because it’s made out of hundreds of flagpoles and windsocks.
You can see here his artistic construction that contains 100 flagpoles up with 100 windsocks, similar to those that can be found on bridges and airports which are used to show the direction of the wind. The tubes are candy-striped and they stand in horizontal position because of the wind.
Buren says that he wants to inspire the illusion of a forest on the beach with his artworks. More about the artist: Daniel Buren is born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France. In 1986 Daniel Buren created a 3,000 m² sculpture in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris: “Les Deux Plateaux”, more commonly referred to as the “Colonnes de Buren”. This provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings. Sometimes classified as an abstract minimalist he is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.
Credits: [DanielBuren.com | Flickr ]
Not to be mistaken for a solar powered desk fan (which is what I thought it was), the crafty Kenisis K2 is a solar and wind powered 2-in-1 charger for all your USB needs.
It can power a typical cell phone 5-times over on a full charge! Um, where do I sign up?
And while it’s designed to harvest the power of nature, it’s also quite practical. It also includes an AC adapter for when Mother Nature isn’t cooperating.
You can stand the device up or hang it from your bike. I like that idea since I sit next to a big sunny window at work - though I wish the wind turbine would also operate as a fan.
The device is expected to run for about $100. Engadget has a nice video of the device from CES here. LED indicators let you know how much juice the device has, and it has internal storage for multiple adapter tips.
Thought I would send along this video from my friend Jay Leno about a new wind turbine called the MagWind from Enviro-Energies that he and I will be installing soon. As many of you have asked about "vertical axis wind turbines," I thought you'd like to see the latest in this technology.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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