I'm a Big Fan of Wind Turbines Quiz

Answer: The Netherlands

While much of Holland (and the Netherlands as a whole) has used both water wheels and windmills to accomplish this task, the Dutch windmills have since become national symbols. While the use of wooden windmills was much more prominent even in the nineteenth and twentieth century (with more than ten thousand on the landscape at one point), there has since been a major effort to preserve these cultural landmarks. Today, only a few are used as actual turbines, harnessing wind power to bring back to the people; many modern versions have cropped up to fill that role.

Answer: California

Part of a short string of wind farms in Southern California, music-goers would be very likely to come across this interesting site on their way to the Coachella Music Festival, close to the Salton Sea and the Mexican border. The site is perfect for turbines, mainly because wind from the coast blows through the pass as it's situated on the leeward side of the San Jacinto Mountain Range.

While it's not the windiest spot in the country (that would be a title given to Mount Washington, New Hampshire), it is one of the only locations in the State of California that would be suitable for a wind farm.

Answer: False

This couldn't be further from the truth. Wind pumps, around even before the existing idea of a windmill or a wind turbine, first cropped up in the Middle East and Asia more than a thousand years ago as a way to provide drinking water. Often made of metal (but also found in wooden varieties, especially in Europe), the structure doesn't create power like a modern wind turbine, but pumps water from below the surface, thus improving the quality of life in many rural areas.

These days, you'd be most likely to find them on farmland in North and South America or in harsher environs like African villages or the Australian Outback.

Answer: Mykonos

Found in the Aegean Sea, these windmills are characterized by the typical white of local architecture. Mykonos, known for being a major (and expensive) destination for travellers in the Aegean, is home to more than a dozen of these, though a great number of them dot the nearby islands.

The construction of these structures began nearly five centuries ago as a way to grind grain but, like many other mills around the world, they became obsolete with new innovations, and stopped being built around the time of World War I. Now, they stand as landmarks; one on Mykonos is actually a museum.

Answer: Paris

While this specific windmill was never really made for grain or power, it has become a cultural landmark since it was constructed at the turn of the nineteenth century. Home to cabaret shows, the Moulin Rouge has had a long history in dance and performance arts, and was allegedly the home of the can-can.

The red mill on top of the building was constructed to mimic the windmills which once dotted the higher hills of Paris (where, sure enough, it can be windy). You may remember it from Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film, but the Moulin Rouge is much more than Nicole Kidman singing mash-ups about diamonds.

It can be found near Montmartre.

Answer: La Mancha

The windmills of La Mancha were, of course, a setting of Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" written in the early seventeenth century. The windmills are still there - you can head to the near-center of the Iberian Peninsula (just south of Madrid) to visit this dry plateau.

Originally built to mill grain, these windmills and those in the nearby town of Consuegra are now simply functioning museums and landmarks. Both towns are in the Toledo region.

Answer: Rotterdam

If you headed to Rotterdam in South Holland (the Schiedam area specifically) you'd end up coming across massive beasts of windmills (one of which is actually a wind turbine thanks to modern rebuilding). The tallest of these historic windmills is De Noord (at 33.3 m.) which, after years as a simple mill, was rebuilt into a tourist destination and restaurant.

The wind turbine, De Nolet, is slightly taller and is used to power the adjacent Ketel One factory. Oh yeah-- the town of Schiedam is also known for gin production, Ketel One being amongst them.

The tallest wind turbine, Fuhrländer Wind Turbine Laasow, is a short distance away in Germany.

Answer: Darrieus wind turbine

Known as a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine, the Darrieus looks different from the typical windmill/turbine mainly because instead of spinning around in wide circles facing the observer, the VAWT spins in circles on the ground; you would need to face straight down overtop of it to see the same circles. One of the tallest in the world is Éole, found on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. Part of a series of more than six dozen windmills, it's home to a large research facility for wind power and the main feature of one of the continent's larger wind farms.

Answer: London Array

Costing nearly two billion pounds to construct, the London Array partly consisted of a series of wind turbines in the middle of the Thames Estuary. At the time of its construction it was the largest offshore wind farm in the world, taking up a great deal of otherwise unused space off the shore of Kent.

While it was a major contributor to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in England and was envisioned to be much larger in area, other environmental concerns (specifically wildlife concerns) brought construction to an end in 2014. Anholt is off the shore of Denmark, Princess Amalia is off the coast of The Netherlands, and Thorntonbank is Belgian.

Answer: Bahrain

Found in Manama, Bahrain, the World Trade Center is outfitted with a trio of turbines which fulfill almost one sixth of the twin-structure's power requirements. Taking in the winds as they blow across the Persian Gulf, the towers were (go figure) built by Danish architects. Denmark, of course, has a history of building the most efficient wind turbines in the world. Each of the turbines extends out from a sky bridge connecting the two towers and the buildings are fifty feet high. Ironically, much of Bahrain's economy has been built around petroleum (and not oil), though they are considered to be a rapidly-growing economic power.