Just had a power cut so got out my wind out torch and radio (prepared for all disasters me ) and neither switched on despite the fact that I wound them both up following the last powercut.

Makes me realise I have no idea how wind up energy works, could someone explain it to me please?

i.e if I wound it up before so it was power ready why where has all the energy stored gone?

Does it just evapourate or something?

How frequently do you need to wind these things up so they are always ready for use and how do you know when they are 'full' so to speak?

andyh would be yer best man to answer this.


*Climbs out window, shuffles down drainpipe and joins the mass exodus sprinting across the drying greens, elbowing old ladies out of his way.*

posted a reply but it was an attempted pic, break the forum thing so deleted

So you don't know how wind up things work either?

Someone must know

I have a kinetic watch, which if not worn for some time, eventually loses its power. I think it may be something to do with the way in which energy is stored in these devices, or you might just have a naff one. Or maybe someone accidentally knocked it on wherever you were storing it?

They hold very little charge Dawny, keep winding them and they should work x

I assumed that the winding motion creates kinetic energy and this is somehow stored or used by a simple turbine-like device, similar to how those stupid lights that you used to have on bikes work (it was no fun cycling with one of those, trust me).

One of these:

wake_up_bomb wrote:
Like peddling with the brakes on .
Hard work if you have wee chicken legs

And cast into darkness if you stopped at a red light!

They were alright when I was 12 years-old, but I wasn't sorry when I got some electric lights than ran off a battery.

Great for the thighs, though.

so you can't store kinetic energy?

Mon Jhado your the expert in all things electrical ...why can you not store kinetic energy

feather wrote:
Haha

Basically Dawn, the clockwork winds up a spring that holds tension.
As the mechanism winds down and releases the tension it turns a small commutator brush over a coil inducing electrical charge, just like a car alternator but small scale.
Some clockwork devices directly discharge as used with no storage, more complex ones might charge up a battery and run off that.

Same principle is used to turn just about any form of power to electricity, you can basically think of it as kinetic-magnetic-electric.

dawnbreak wrote:
Yeah you can store it, just moving a weight high up on a ledge is potential stored energy for example, a little shove and it falls off

The clockwork spring is stored kinetic too as a ratchet holds the tension in the spring and its released when the ratchet is lifted.
A gearing mechanism would prevent the coil spring from immediately unravelling and discharging its energy too quickly.

Is it just a basic torch, Dawn, or does it have other functions, such as a radio etc?

Ab Origine wrote:
End up with legs that could peddle a tractor

scaltura wrote:
It's true...I had legs like big-bird before I started cycling again. Now, I could crush walnuts. Or grip a well-oiled person firmly in place. Whatever.

Ab Origine wrote:
a wind up tourch

a wind up radio

both separate entities

fuck it I'll buy some batteries

dawnbreak wrote:
for the same reason you can't keep sunshine in a sporran, simple quantum mechanics really, as you know

dawnbreak wrote:
Not necessarily, no. Was only trying to help...









Mardy biatch.