The artificial fire fly would be made of glow - in - the - dark material, have windmill shaped wings to rotate in the wind - creating a bit of power to light them and also have a solar panel. All three things might just make them glow a little come dark. Hang from trees around the garden.-- gizmo, May 07 2002 Wind resource evaluation http://www.awea.org/faq/basicwr.htmlWind power density measurement. [pottedstu, May 08 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] My design is smaller than a golf ball, ulness we are talking about midgets, I don't think they would hurt.-- gizmo, May 07 2002 Maybe a neat spinoff of the technology would be wireless wind-powered christmas lights. I hate trying to get the strings unknotted every year.-- spartanica, May 07 2002 (Does maths)
Apparently an average wind speed of 12.5 mph gives 200 Watts per square metre. I think this is quite high for average wind speed, and about the minimum for commercial wind power generators.
A golf-ball sized device would have cross-section of around 10 square centimetres, giving 0.2 W if all the wind's power could be converted to electricity.
A quick look at the Toshiba website suggests a typical red LED has power consumption of 0.075 W.
So with a suitably efficient generator, this *might* be possible, but someone with more knowledge of these things would need to check.-- pottedstu, May 08 2002 presuming these were all-weather things, the solar panel would mean they could charge a battery all day, and only need the wind-power for supplementary power.
Which is just as well, as one red LED isn't really very bright at all - In fact, why not make them bright enough to be useful for more than decoration? My parent's garden path is dark and treacherous...-- yamahito, May 08 2002 yamahito, solar garden path lighting is commonly available.
While searching about, I discovered a company that manufactures solar-charged pool/pond floating lights in different colo(u)rs. Nice idea. No pix, though, or I would have linked.-- waugsqueke, May 08 2002 random, halfbakery