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2009 Phys. Educ. 44 379

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 FEATURES
www.iop.org/journals/physed

Constructing a plastic bottle wind

turbine as a practical aid for
learning about using wind energy
to generate electricity
S J Appleyard
Department of Environment and Conservation, Perth, Western Australia

E-mail: steve.appleyard@dec.wa.gov.au

Abstract
A simple horizontal axis wind turbine can be easily constructed using a 1.5 l
PET plastic bottle, a compact disc and a small dynamo. The turbine operates
effectively at low wind speeds and has a rotational speed of 500 rpm at a
wind speed of about 14 km h−1 . The wind turbine can be used to
demonstrate the relationship between open circuit voltage and wind speed,
and to show how varying the size, shape and number of turbine blades can
affect power output from the device.

Introduction can be incorporated into lessons on utilizing wind

Wind turbines are becoming increasingly impor-
tant for electricity generation due to concerns
about carbon dioxide emissions from the burning
of fossil fuels. Consequently, it is important that
school science courses provide some information
on the physics behind harnessing wind energy and
that simple ‘hands on’ teaching aids are developed
to make the topic more accessible and interesting
for students. To be useful, teaching aids should
be simple to construct using readily accessible and
low cost materials.
This is demonstrated here with the construc-
tion of a simple wind turbine, using a plastic bottle,
a compact disc (CD) and a small electric motor,
which highlights some of the features of larger
turbines that are used for generating electricity
in many parts of the world. Construction details
for the plastic bottle wind turbine are provided
below together with some suggestions about how it
energy for generating electricity.
How wind turbines work
Although wind power has been harnessed for
thousands of years for milling flour from cereal
crops and for pumping water, the windmills that
carried out these tasks were generally slow moving
and inefficient and relied purely on a downwind
‘drag’ (pushing) force for doing work. By contrast,
modern ‘horizontal axis wind turbines’ (HAWTs)
operate much more efficiently using the same lift
force that allows aircraft to fly, and they have
blades that have a similar shape in section to an
aircraft wing.
A detailed description of how wings work is
given by Babinsky (2003), but a brief account is
given below and is illustrated in figure 1.
Consider a ‘particle’ (i.e. a small volume)
of air that is moving along one of the curved

0031-9120/09/040379+05$30.00 © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd PHYSICS EDUCATION 44 (4) 379

S J Appleyard
apparent wind
direction angle of
attack
lift
drag
streamlines
Figure 1. Schematic view of the operation of a
wind turbine.
streamlines (figure 1) above the surface of the
windmill blade. Because the particle is changing
direction, there must exist a centripetal force
acting normal to the direction of the movement
of the particle. This force can only be generated
if a pressure difference exists between one side
of the particle and the other, with the pressure
increasing in the direction away from the centre
of curvature of the streamline (i.e. to the right
in figure 1). By contrast, streamlines on the
other side of the windmill blade have much less
curvature, and therefore there is a much smaller
pressure gradient across a particle on one of these
streamlines. Due to these differences in streamline
curvature between one side of the windmill blade
and the other, if pressure were to be measured at
the surface of each side of the blade, a distinct air
pressure difference would be found that creates a
lift force (figure 1).
The extent to which the lift force exceeds the
drag force in any given part of the wind turbine
blade depends on the cross-sectional shape of
the blade at that point, the angle at which the
blade is inclined to the apparent wind direction
and speed. As the tip of the turbine blade is
moving much faster than the blade near the hub,
both the apparent wind speed and direction change
uniformly along the length of the blade. This
means that both the cross-sectional shape of the
blade and the angle of attack (figure 1) of the blade
need to change along its length to maximize the
380 PHYSICS EDUCATION
lift for the entire blade. As a consequence of these
factors, wind turbine blades tend to be thicker and
more steeply inclined near the hub than near the
tip of the blade, giving them a distinct ‘twisted’
appearance when viewed along the length of the
blade.
The amount of power that could potentially
be harnessed from wind is given by the following
formula:
P(watt) = 0.5ρπr 2 v 3 (1)
where ρ = density of the air (approximately
1.0 kg m−3 ), r = radius of the area swept by the
turbine blades (m), v = wind speed (m s−1 ).
In practice, it is not possible to capture and
convert all of the kinetic energy in wind into
mechanical work. Betz’s law indicates that only
up to 59% of wind energy is available for use by
wind turbines.
Constructing the plastic bottle wind
turbine
Constructing the turbine blades
The turbine blades are constructed using a 1.5 l
mineral-water bottle made of PET plastic. Bottles
made of PET plastic are easily distinguished
from polyethylene bottles by their more glossy
appearance and by the presence of a number
‘1’ stamped in the recycling symbol on the
bottle. PET is stiffer and more ‘springy’ than
polyethylene and is more suitable for making
turbine blades than polyethylene.
Choose a bottle that is cylindrical in shape
and has a short neck. Using a felt-tip marker and
a piece of string, divide the circumference of the
bottle into four equally sized quadrants which are
marked with vertical lines (figure 2(a)). Cut along
these lines with a pair of scissors and cut at 90◦
to these lines at both the base and the neck of
the bottle to form four equally sized curved panels
which are rectangular in shape (figure 2(b)). Place
each panel convex-side up on a flat surface and
mark points 1.5 cm from the top right-hand and the
bottom left-hand corners of the panel. Join these
points with a diagonal line and cut along this line
to form two equally sized curved segments which
are approximately triangular in shape (figure 2(b)).
These segments will be used as turbine blades.
July 2009

(a)
(b)
Figure 2. Construction of the turbine blades from a
1.5 l plastic bottle showing (a) the measurement of four
quadrants of equal area around the circumference of the
bottle and (b) the cutting of the blades from these
quadrants.
Assembling the turbine blades on the hub
Use a protractor, a ruler and a felt-tipped marker
to draw lines at 60◦ intervals from the centre of the
CD to its outer edge. Run a bead of glue along
one of these lines with a hot-glue gun, pick up a
turbine blade concave-side up and press the square
edge of the blade firmly onto the softened glue
until a strong bond is formed (note: only the front
edge is glued, leaving the rear end of the blade to
curve upwards from the CD surface). Repeat this
procedure for the other five blades, ensuring that
each blade is glued equidistant from the centre of
the CD. If the turbine is to be used in strong winds,
it is recommended that an epoxy-resin adhesive
is also used to ensure that the blades are firmly
bonded to the CD. A photograph of a completed
blade assembly is shown in figure 3.
July 2009
Constructing a plastic bottle wind turbine
Figure 3. View of a completed wind turbine showing
the arrangement of blades on the CD hub. Also shown
is the small dynamo used which is attached to the rear
of the hub.
Selecting an electric motor to use as a dynamo
with the wind turbine
Although theoretically any small DC electric
motor can be used as a DC generator (dynamo), in
practice many motors perform poorly when used in
this role. This is because they are often designed
to spin very quickly in response to a particular
power input, and consequently they only produce
a very low voltage when spun at the much lower
rates typical in many generators. The best way
to assess whether a motor will work effectively
as a dynamo (without using gearing to increase its
rotation speed) is either to purchase a purpose-built
dynamo, or turn the shaft of the selected motor
by hand and see whether a voltage change can be
detected with a multimeter.
For this project, a purpose-built ‘mini-
dynamo’ was purchased from an electronic supply
retailer for a cost of about A C1.50. This was
a permanent-magnet dynamo that was rated as
producing 9 V DC and a current of 220 mA
at a maximum shaft rotation speed of 10 000
revolutions per minute (rpm).
Voltage output is measured by connecting
a multimeter to the dynamo with crocodile
clips.
PHYSICS EDUCATION 381
S J Appleyard
Table 1. The relationship between angle and wind
speed for the protractor and table-tennis ball
anemometer.
Measured angle (deg) Wind speed (km h−1 )
90 0
89 4
88 6
87 7
86 8
85 9
84 10
82 12
80 13
75 16
70 19
65 21
60 24
50 29

Connecting the dynamo to the hub

The dynamo connector is made using a plastic
bottle top and a plastic wall plug (used for
screwing fittings to masonry walls and obtained
from hardware stores). A small hole is drilled in
the centre of the bottle top and the hole is widened
with a knife blade until a section of wall plug was
able to fit snugly in it. The wall plug is secured
in place using glue, and the upper surface of the
bottle top is glued to the underside of the CD,
taking care that the wall plug is centred in the
middle of the CD (figure 3). The hub assembly
is then turned upside down and the shaft of the
dynamo is secured by placing a small bead of hot
glue on the wall plug. The dynamo shaft is gently
pushed into the plug and the glue is allowed to set.
Measuring wind speed
It is useful to be able to measure wind speed to
assess the performance of the wind turbine. This
can be done using the simple protractor and table-
tennis ball anemometer shown in figure 4. This
is made by securing a piece of cotton thread to
the origin of the protractor using modelling clay
or glue and attaching a table-tennis ball to the
other end of the thread. It is used by holding
the protractor upside down and ensuring that the
cotton thread hangs vertically over the ‘90◦ ’ mark
when there is no wind. Wind gusts will displace
the cotton thread by an angle proportional to wind
speed. The relationship between the measured
angle of displacement of the thread and wind speed
is shown in table 1.
Figure 4. View of the protractor and table-tennis ball
anemometer used to measure wind speed.
Using the wind turbine
As the wind turbine operates at low wind speeds,
the simplest way of using it is to hold the dynamo
and face the blades into the wind. Holding
the wind turbine in this way eliminates the
need to construct a tower to mount the device,
but this needs to done with great care as the
blades can injure fingers when rotating at high
speed. It is recommended that groups of three
are used to measure open circuit voltage and wind
speed, with one person playing the role of the
tower, one person measuring wind speed and one
person measuring voltage from the dynamo with a
multimeter.
Figure 5 shows how the open circuit voltage
of the wind turbine dynamo increases in a
nonlinear way with wind speed. The rotation
speed of the turbine blades also increases with
wind speed, and data provided by the manufacturer

382 PHYSICS EDUCATION July 2009

 Constructing a plastic bottle wind turbine
under open circuit conditions where current flow
0.6 is extremely small and constant, voltage would
increase in direct proportion to the wind speed
dynamo voltage (V)

cubed. This is demonstrated in figure 6 which

0.4
shows an approximate linear relationship between
the open circuit voltage of the wind turbine
0.2 dynamo and wind speed.
The wind turbine constructed here has six
blades which enables it to start reliably at low wind
0 speeds, but most wind turbines used for generating
0 5 10 15 electricity have three (or occasionally two) blades.
wind speed (km h–1) Increasing the number of blades often improves
Figure 5. Relationship between wind speed and open the torque (turning force) of wind turbines but
circuit voltage produced by the wind turbine
constructed in this study. reduces rotational speed. Try constructing turbines
using the procedures described above but varying
the number of blades and observe the effects
0.6 on output voltage. Try also changing the blade
geometry (cut the blades at different angles
dynamo voltage (V)

from plastic bottles), or blade size and observe

0.4 the effects on performance under different wind
conditions. What combination of factors gives
the best performance under the wind conditions in
0.2
your local area?

0 Acknowledgments
0 1000 2000 3000
wind speed cubed (km h–3) I would like to acknowledge input provided by
an anonymous reviewer and the Editor, which
Figure 6. Relationship between wind speed cubed
and open circuit voltage produced by the wind substantially improved the quality of the final
turbine constructed in this study. paper.

Received 22 February 2009, in final form 3 April 2009

of the dynamo used indicates that the blade doi:10.1088/0031-9120/44/4/006
rotation speed reaches 500 revolutions per minute
(rpm) at a wind speed of 14 km h−1 .
References
As the electrical power produced by a dynamo
is the product of its output voltage and current, Babinsky H 2003 How do wings work? J. Phys. Educ.
it might be expected from equation (1) that 38 497–503

July 2009 PHYSICS EDUCATION 383