We have seen some pretty interesting and clever use of lasers in the past, and the homemade lightsaber is one of them, not to mention military application a few months back. This time around, how about using lasers to predict potential wind direction? If you need to know, WindTracer systems have been in action around the world for more than a decade, where it is used to detect hazardous winds and aircraft wakes. The thing about wind energy is this, it is extremely difficult to predict the behavior of the wind itself, not to mention plan for the amount of power that wind turbines can generate each day. However, if one is able to predict the wind’s direction, the latter task is easier to perform, which is why devices like the WindTracer which rely on a scanner that will utilize a laser to “trace” microscopic dust particles in the wind comes in handy in the long run.
WindTracer would fire an infrared laser into the atmosphere at a rate of 750 times per second, and since light travels anywhere from 15 to 30 kilometers, or until it has contacted an object like dust or other airborne particles, it will reflects off the object and bounces back toward the WindTracer. This reflected signal is the basis from where one calculates the speed of the dust particles blowing in the wind, and hence making a clever prediction of the wind direction.
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