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    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects
    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects
    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects
    Ebook216 pages1 hour

    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects

    By Donna Latham and Andrew Christensen

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    About this ebook

    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering invites children ages 9 and up to explore the innovation and physical science behind the amazing waterways and barriers our world depends on. Trivia and fun facts illustrate engineering ingenuity and achievements from ancient aqueducts to the Suez Canal and the Hoover Dam. Readers will discover that engineers and builders alike put their lives on the line to advance civilization, experiencing triumphs and tragedies in building big. Through dazzling success and heartbreaking failure, they developed increasingly sophisticated tools and building methods.

    Activities and projects encourage children to explore the engineering process and to try, try again through trial and error. They'll engage in hands-on explorations of buoyancy, Newton's third law of motion, and forces that push and pull structures. They'll create a paper-cup zip line, build an arch, and simulate a tsunami, while experimenting with gravity, hydroponics, and velocity. In Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering, children will gain an appreciation for the important field of engineering as they develop their own building skills.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNomad Press
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781619301672
    Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering with 25 Projects

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    • 5/5
      The building of bridges and tunnels is a fascinating feat for engineers. Young readers curious about how these man made monstrosities are built will learn all about them. An engineer is a person who uses science and math to build. Some of the tools they use to draw an idea are levels, planes, protractors and geometry. Young readers will learn all the terminology engineers use every day. Each page has a “words to know” box that explains definitions for any young reader can easily understand. The “did you know” box shares fun facts about how engineers use their keen insights to avoid disasters. The history of bridges and tunnels can also be found along with the workers stories and how they survived and died building these massive projects. In the case of many bridges, readers will learn how war, wind, fire and ice have caused them to collapse. For example: the London Bridge was originally a crude Roman bridge built in 52 CE. The bridge spanned the River Thames in England for centuries, but it fell many times. Experiments are listed with detail instructions so that readers can put what they've learned to the test. Simple structures can be made with things found at home, such as marshmallows and toothpicks. Homemade paper wheels can teach young minds how steam works. Various pages have “notable quotes” which provide inspiration from famous people. There are 25 different projects in all. The back pages list other books, sites, a glossary and index to help readers find more information about engineering and to become better equipped with the terms used. Teachers and parents will enjoy sharing and learning with this handy tool that will inspire any math or science student.

    Book preview

    Canals and Dams - Donna Latham

    Nomad Press is committed to preserving ancient forests and natural resources. We elected to print Canals and Dams: Investigate Feats of Engineering on 4,007 lbs. of Williamsburg Recycled 30% offset.

    Nomad Press made this paper choice because our printer, Sheridan Books, is a member of Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit program dedicated to supporting authors, publishers, and suppliers in their efforts to reduce their use of fiber obtained from endangered forests.

    For more information, visit www.greenpressinitiative.org.

    Nomad Press

    A division of Nomad Communications

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Copyright © 2013 by Nomad Press. All rights reserved.

    No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review or for limited educational use. The trademark Nomad Press and the Nomad Press logo are trademarks of Nomad Communications, Inc.

    This book was manufactured by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, MI USA.

    April 2013, Job #345313

    ISBN: 978-1-61930-165-8

    Illustrations by Andrew Christensen

    Educational Consultant, Marla Conn

    Questions regarding the ordering of this book should be addressed to

    Independent Publishers Group

    814 N. Franklin St.

    Chicago, IL 60610

    www.ipgbook.com

    Nomad Press

    2456 Christian St.

    White River Junction, VT 05001

    www.nomadpress.net

    CONTENTS

    Timeline

    Introduction

    Water Tamers

    Chapter 1

    Engineering and Thinking Big

    Chapter 2

    Building Big: The Physics of Canals

    Chapter 3

    Amazing Canals

    Chapter 4

    Canal Catastrophes

    Chapter 5

    Building Big: The Physics of Dams

    Chapter 6

    Amazing Dams

    Chapter 7

    Dam Disasters

    Glossary

    Resources

    Index

    For Robbie Borland and Arden Esvang. Builders of the future.

    Sincere thanks to hydrologist and cheerleader extraordinaire Nick Longo and to physicist Eric Prebys, Ph.D, at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.

    ~ Latest titles in the Build It Yourself Series ~

    Check out more titles at www.nomadpress.net

    TIMELINE

    3100 BCE OR EARLIER: Ancient Greek engineers develop flat-bottomed basins with simple sluice gates to capture Nile River floodwaters for irrigation.

    2700 BCE: Ancient Egyptians construct Sadd-el-Kafara Dam, one of the world’s earliest dams, along the Nile River. When floodwaters wipe out the embankment dam, engineers give up on the idea of damming.

    1200 BCE: Ancient engineers build Las Capas, the earliest irrigation system in America. The system routes water from the Santa Cruz River to the Sonoran Desert and allows hunter-gatherers to begin farming.

    19 BCE: Ancient Roman engineers develop hydraulic concrete using volcanic ash. It allows them to build underwater structures. Some are still preserved today.

    1500 CE: In Venice, Italy, the artist, inventor, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci gains inspiration from canals and waterways. He explores principles of buoyancy.

    1825: The Erie Canal opens, linking Lake Erie with the Atlantic Ocean.

    1869: Egypt’s Suez Canal is completed, linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The canal saves ships 6,000 miles of travel (9,656 kilometers) around Africa.

    1899: Pounding rains and snowmelt smash Johnstown, Pennsylvania, causing the South Fork Dam to fail. A wall of 20 million tons of water devastates the community, killing over 2,200 people.

    1914: The Panama Canal opens. The international waterway links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, saving 8,000 miles of travel (over 12,000 kilometers) around South America.

    1936: The Hoover Dam is built to control the Colorado River. Workers toil in hazardous conditions and sizzling heat on the border of Nevada and Arizona.

    1943: During World War II, British pilots destroy Nazi Germany’s hydroelectric dams with bouncing bombs.

    1963: Vajont Dam in the Italian Alps fails, and a disastrous landslide overwhelms the area.

    1970: Aswan High Dam along the Nile River in Aswan, Egypt, is completed. The dam is praised as the twentieth century’s greatest feat of engineering.

    1978: Chemicals dumped in the Love Canal near Niagara Falls, New York, harm people and the environment. It is one of the most notorious environmental tragedies in the United States.

    2005: Hurricane Katrina slams southeastern Louisiana and floods New Orleans in a devastating disaster.

    2006: Three Gorges Dam, over China’s Yangtze River, is completed. The world’s largest hydroelectric project displaces over a million people and destroys the Yangtze River dolphin’s habitat.

    2008: Truckee Canal fails because of damage from rodents, releasing frigid water that floods Fernley, Nevada.

    2012: Hurricane Isaac slams New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The fortified levees hold.

    2012: Record drought in the midwestern United States radically reduces water levels in Indiana’s Salamonie River. A town submerged for dam construction in 1965 rises up.

    2012: Melting Arctic ice opens Arctic waters. It raises critical questions about new global trade routes and future water control.

    WATER TAMERS

    HOW DO YOU START YOUR MORNINGS?

    Maybe you take a shower. After breakfast, do you brush your teeth and rinse your mouth? Do you wash your dishes? All of this requires water. Our blue planet is a watery place, with water covering about 70 percent of its surface. In fact, there’s so much water it’s easy to take it for granted. We twist a tap or a spigot. Presto! Flowing water. Water is an important natural resource, but where does it come from? The answer might surprise you.

    But there is really nothing natural about the way we get our water.

    WORDS to KNOW

    natural resource: a material or substance such as gold, wood, and water that occurs in nature and is valuable to humans.

    dam: a barrier built across a river or stream to control and collect water.

    reservoir: an artificial lake or tank for collecting and storing water.

    hydroelectricity: electricity generated from water power.

    levee: a wall of earth or stone built along a riverbank to prevent flooding of the land.

    canal: a man-made waterway built for shipping, navigation, or irrigation.

    irrigation: supplying land with water using pipes and ditches, usually for crops.

    freshwater: water that is not salty.

    People build dams across rivers. These dams create reservoirs to store water supplies and produce hydroelectricity. People also build levees and canals to channel water to homes and fields and keep rivers running where we want them to go.

    Why do people control water in these ways when there is so much water on Earth? Because there’s a lot of water in some areas, while other areas are too dry.

    Across the planet, man-made systems move water from deeper river basins to drier river basins. And we’re talking about huge amounts of water going huge distances. The California State Water Project, for example, moves 6.6 billion gallons (25 billion liters) each year over a distance of 444 miles (715 kilometers)! In fact, so much freshwater moves from river basin to river basin every year in the United States, it’s like moving 22 Colorado Rivers!

    DID YOU KNOW?

    The Colorado River is the United States’ fifth-largest river! Its course flows 1,450 miles from its source in the Rocky Mountains to its mouth at the Gulf of California in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert (2,330 kilometers).

    Water sustains life. As long as people have lived on Earth, they’ve depended on freshwater for survival. Long ago, hunter-gatherers followed wild animals to hunt as the seasons changed. They gathered fruits and seeds and searched for freshwater wherever they went.

    Sometime about 10,000 years ago, people started settling down in one place and growing their own crops. What do crops need? Sun, of course, but also water! As populations grew and the best land near water sources was taken, people had to settle farther and farther away from springs and rivers. This created an enormous problem for farming. Our ancestors needed to move water supplies from one place to another.

    WORDS to KNOW

    course: the path a river takes from its source, where it begins, to its mouth, where it empties.

    crop: a plant grown for food and other uses.

    ancestors: the people that lived before you.

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