680
'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
680 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
86251 readers
3620 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Edit: I'm wrong, see edit below!
Huh? Kinetic energy increase is square, not cubic.
KE=1/2 m v^2
So every doubling of speed should increase the available kinetic energy by 4 times, not 8. 3 times the speed is 9 times the energy. Granted there are probably some efficiency gains in excess of this at the low end, ~~but as a rule that's just wrong.~~
Edit: Cool, I learned something new! I neglected to consider it in terms of power, just thought about kinetic energy.
So something like: KE = 1/2 m v^2
= 1/2 ( rho V) v^2
= 1/2 ( rho A d) (d/t)^2
= 1/2 rho A d^3 1/t^2
Where P = KE/t
Thus:
P = 1/2 rho A (d/t)^3
= 1/2 rho A v^3
Lots of other aspects I'm sure I have wrong, but I see how the cubic came to be.
Its cubic actually
https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/wind-power-impacts-of-larger-turbines/
I don't understand the physics, but every model of power output from wind turbines uses V^3 for the formula
That's a good link.
During the stampede scene in the Lion King, imagine the wildebeests were stampeding twice as fast. Then Simba's dad Mufasa would not only have quadruple the amount of energy imparted by each wildebeest, but also be trampled by twice as many wildebeests per second, so the rate of energy imparted on Mufasa per second would be 4 x 2 = 8 times greater when velocity doubles.
Education via childhood trauma