Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Dam Building 101

We recently spent a day learning about dams -- types, purposes, building materials -- and of course then went out and built some!  It was a wonderfully warm and sunny day, perfect for setting the hose in the alley and messing around in the newly created river.

 Here Luke works on his arch dam.  Okay, the piece of wood didn't really arch, but the idea is that a wide piece of material spans the waterway and latches into notches on either side of the "canyon."

Here, Isaac show his embankment or earthen dam to his brothers.  We used straws to allow water to pass through without out overflowing the lake!

Levi's gravity dam -- held in place by the sheer weight of the dam material -- was probably the most impressive.  It created the largest reservoir anyway.

Elijah's buttress dam is kept from washing down river by -- can you guess? -- buttresses!

It was a totally rocking' way to spend part of the afternoon.  With water, mud and sunshine, how could it not be?

1 comment:

Karen said...

That looks awesome! My boys would have loved to join in with that experiment/ project! And, your boys look like they stayed relatively clean.