3 ms·

That's because they lose lift though. For a turbine, that wouldn't matter (at least directly). I have to imagine it's really the overall weight or the unbalanc

• bombcar 6y ago
  The wind turbine spins because of an analog of lift - without “lift” it won’t spin. There’s also the issue of balance.
  • xxpor 6y ago
    >The wind turbine spins because of an analog of lift - without “lift” it won’t spin. Thinking about it, that does make perfect sense, but just intuitively, I would think say, making a blade that had a flat side perpendicular to the wind direction would work, because the force can still be imparted to the blade. I can also intuitively surmise why that wouldn't work for a plane though. When dealing with a plane, you want to generate force perpendicular to the wing (i.e. up when the plane is moving horizontally), but in a turbine you want the force to be in the same direction as the blade is moving. I feel like I must be missing something.
    • bombcar 6y ago
      You're not - a flat board works as a wing with enough force behind it. There's a description on how a wing works involving Bernoulli's law - but it's more accurate to think of it how your hand feels when you hold it out the window of a car at speed. And of course old windmills were just boards - and I suspect they only stop working in the cold if the bearings freeze.