POWER TALK

HAPPENINGS

Let it blow, let it blow, let it blow March 7 at the Zilker Park Kite Festival in Austin. With spring just a strong breeze away, spirits will soar as high as the thousands of kites filling the sky.

Contest categories include highest angle (flying directly overhead), steadiest flying, strongest pulling, most unusual, and smallest and largest kites. Anyone flying a homemade kite may compete.
Admission is free, and leashed dogs are welcome. For more information, call (512) 448-5483 or go to www.zilkerkitefestival.com.

THE AGGRESSIVE AGARITA

Agarita is preceded only by mistletoe in the annual blooming cycle of bee plants in Texas. Its flowers are also unusual in having stamens with touch-sensitive bases, which, when triggered, strike the nectar-seeking bee on the head, covering it with pollen.

—Matt Warnock Turner, Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives, University of Texas Press, 2009

CHECK IT OUT
Calories to Kilowatts

Texas State University in San Marcos lays claim to having the “largest human power plant in the world.” The university has retrofitted 30 elliptical machines in the student recreation center to convert human exercise into electricity that is fed to the campus’ power grid. The technology sold by ReRev, a Florida-based company, captures the kinetic energy of aerobic exercise, converts it to direct current and then into alternating current, the kind used in businesses and homes.

According to the company, a typical 30-minute workout will produce 50 watt-hours of clean, carbon-free electricity—enough energy to power a laptop computer for one hour or a desktop computer for 30 minutes. This is the largest such project for ReRev, which has installed similar exercise machines at other universities and private organizations in other states.

Texas State officials hope the project will encourage students to become more energy efficient. A university news release states, “We want the Texas State community to gain a better understanding of how much energy it takes to power simple devices we use on a regular basis.”

WHO KNEW

The encyclopedic Handbook of Texas, published by the Texas State Historical Association, now runs to six volumes. But topics from Texas history to culture are easily searchable online. Just go to www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online.