Rabbit Island
What an inspiration – two guys buy an island on Craigslist and decide to turn it into a retreat for artists.
It looks stunning:
Inspired by nature – how trees make for a better solar panel arrangement
Could tree branches hold the secret to more efficient solar energy?
It took the inquisitive nature of a thirteen year old to notice something that has been staring us in the face. This incredible story shows how nature has it all worked out, as Aidan discovered that arranging solar panels in a way that mimics the way trees grow can actually give us more efficient clean energy creation. Not to mention that it looks better.
As Aidan points out:
People see winter as a cold and gloomy time in nature.
But then, he had an epiphany while hiking:
I noticed something strange about the shape of the tree branches. I thought trees were a mess of tangled branches, but I saw a pattern in the way the tree branches grew. I took photos of the branches on different types of trees, and the pattern became clearer.
Having discovered that tree branches grow in spirals that mimic the Fibonacci Sequence, he thought it must be the most efficient way to collect sunlight for photosynthesis. He wanted to test his hypothesis so he designed a tree shape with solar panels instead of leaves.
Read more here
Eco-clubbing
Yeah, so this blog is all about yoga type things and complementary health and stuff like that, so obviously I’m a repressed hippie with eco-concerns…….Eco-clubbing eh? This is a pretty cool concept – I heard about it on the radio this morning. A new club in London is now eco friendly. The crowning glory is their dance floor that uses the movement of the dancers to create electricity – how cool is that? The dancefloor is piezoelectric
I’m not a big clubber, but I’m all for this! The website was pretty difficult to find, because they aren’t well SEO’d, you are in fact more likely to come across the guardian article, or maybe one of the blogs about it but here it is – Club Surya – headed by Dr Earth who seems to be style on Dr Evil. Lol
Now evidently, there is some controversy. Dr Earth (real name Andrew Charalambous) is, by all accounts, an eccentric millionnaire with close ties to Boris Johnson (London’s new Mayor)….which is how he got permission to keep the club open all night, despite King’s Cross rather stringent noise level constraints. Then there is the claim that it is the first eco-club, which is contested by the sustainable dance club in the Netherlands.
Well, whatever, they can fight it out between them, I’m more interested in the future application of piezoelectriciy – i mean surely we can put this down anywhere we have high volume of human traffic…..what about indoor football fields, squash courts, restuarants, shopping malls, airports? I don’t know if it is even technologically possible, or feasible financially, but it sounds like a good idea to me. What about we put every office worker on an exercise bike at their desk for an hour a day and make them pedal to create some electricity to power their pc?…..we win two ways – keep the population fit, and reduce carbon footprint 