Turbine-free wind powerJAN 20 2011

Turbines are expensive to build, noisy, big, and they kill birds. Perhaps these pad panels would be better suited to generating electricity from the wind.

The wind panels are the brainchild of Francis Moon, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell University. He created a panel of 25 pads that oscillate in the wind, much the way leaves vibrate when a gust of air sifts through a tree. The pads attach to piezoelectric materials that produce electricity from each vibration.