Every now and then, I raed something that just makes me shake my head in disbelief. The problem usually stems from a misunderstanding of time when it is related to energy.

This morning, while reading an article on a green energy project, I saw such a confusion. The article was about a project that could produce $40 wind turbines for the third world.

So how much energy do these $40 turbines produce? Well, accorfing to the article, it is enough to run a home’s lights for a day, or a radio for a couple of days.

HUH?!?

So after running a radio for a couple of days, it just keels over and stops working? It better be cheaper than $40 if that is the case.

I know no more about this turbine’s capabilities now that I have read the article than I knew before.

It’s not the first I have seen such a confusion. On another occasion, I saw a utility-scale wind turbine being described as large enough to power x number of homes “per day.”. That, at least, could be decoded by removing the erroneous “per day” suffix; otherwise, it means you can add x more homes to the grid every day and this one turbine will just take care of them, that simple.

Please, know what your words mean before you commit them to publication.