Grist Mill field trip

The first time I ever heard of this place was ten years ago when I was looking up mills for our first Water Unit. I was so excited to find it was close enough to drive to, and that it was open for visitors! I remember how excited the boys were to see a REAL waterwheel after we'd been learning about them. It was just so cool! So, I was excited to visit again with the kids that had never been there, and with Sam, who hadn't been there either!

It was a nice day for a field trip. We took a picnic and had such a good time! A few of the buildings were closed on this visit and there wasn't anyone there to show us around, but there was quite a bit of stuff to see anyway.

Some of the gears, turning vertical motion into horizontal motion.

The waterwheel on the smaller mill house

Big waterwheel

These big belts of grain elevators were cool

This was cute—a little model of the mill. Daisy liked it.

Even with a tiny waterwheel!

More belts and pulleys inside the mill

There were some fun little activities for kids in the other buildings around the mill. One thing they had was a little potholder weaving loom. Junie has one at home, so she's fast—fast enough to make a whole potholder to bring home!

Cow milking

Swings at the playground afterward!

Bonneville Dam, Oregon

To break up the drive a bit on our way home, we stopped at Bonneville Dam. We do love a good dam in this family, and we seek them out whenever possible. We feel we are getting quite a good series of dams under our belts! :) This dam is quite interesting because of the changes made in it over the years. We went on a tour of the powerhouse and enjoyed it immensely!

Huge generators (turbines are below, with the orange stripe)

Junie by one of the stator coils

Our tour guide told us that a huge chunk fell off of this mountain and dammed the Columbia River in Prehistoric times. Much of that landslide later eroded away, but that's what gave the river its distinctive shape and two-channel flow pattern.

We loved watching fish jump up the fish ladders

And Daisy also loved this huge turbine, evidently.

Fish ladder from below

Lampreys! If there's one piece of information I know in this world, it's what a lamprey has: a round sucking mouth with rasping teeth. I learned it in 10th-grade biology and I have repeated it frequently ever since (ask anyone). So you can imagine my pleasure and delight at seeing one in the flesh. Round sucking mouth! Rasping teeth! It's all there.

Seb poses precariously on a hill

Hoover Dam

I interrupt our Denmark Unit to bring you this special coverage of the Hoover Dam. Would you believe me if I said the boys were just as excited about going to the Hoover Dam as they were about going to Disneyland? Our trip to Flaming Gorge just whetted their appetites (the Flaming Gorge guide kept giving stats in relation to the Hoover Dam), so they'd been looking forward to it for a long time. Unfortunately, kids under 8 can't do the longer tour at the Hoover Dam, but we did get to see the powerhouse and everyone seemed content with that. Junie was extra heavy and squirmy and we hadn't brought the stroller, so Sam and I were definitely content with that!

Seb loved this huge wall diagram of the path of water through the powerhouse and dam. Probably because he has drawn many a similar diagram, in his day.

Tunnel toward the old diversion tunnel

The enormous penstock---we got to walk right over it

Powerhouse (Nevada side)---7 of the 15 enormous turbines

Intake towers

Outside 

One of many re-constructions created after we got home (note powerlines coming out of powerhouse toward transformers)

Hydropowered "Generator"

Well, frankly, this was a little disappointing. When I was preparing to teach about hydropower and generators, Sam said, "Why don't you build a generator?" I didn't think I could handle helping the boys do that by myself (I'm just barely learning how they work myself!), but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the boys would get really into that idea, so I finally found some instructions that seemed detailed enough for even me to follow. They had pictures and a supply list and everything. The hardest part was finding copper magnet wire, which the instructions acted like could just be picked up at any old store. Home Depot and Lowe's didn't have any of this gauge (very small---24), and neither did Radio Shack, where they sent me. I finally ordered it from Amazon, which I should have done in the first place.

The rest of the supplies were mostly things we already had, or fairly easy to come by, so we set aside an afternoon to work on it. Seb and Abe (the only ones I really thought could participate) were SO excited. We wound and wound and wound until we had four coils of wire. But then things started to be complicated. We didn't have quite the right size cork, or quite the right size dowel, and we tried to make it work but we weren't sure if it was going to. And our current, when we tested it, was definitely doing something . . . but we couldn't quite tell if it was doing what it was supposed to do.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is, the turbine turned beautifully (with enough water pressure, e.g. the hose) but we couldn't tell if it was actually generating any power for us or not. The tiny flashlight bulb we tried to hook up didn't light, but we weren't sure if that bulb would even work with alternating current, and then our multi-meter didn't get consistent readings, but we don't know if that's because we didn't have good contact with the wires (hard to hold it still when you're trying to hold the hose on the turbines) or because the current wasn't running. There were just too many variables. Was the incorrect dowel size causing trouble? We couldn't see why it would be, but who knows? Did it matter that I put the turbine in the bottle upside down (yes, that was my stupid mistake) so we were sending in the water from the bottom instead of the top? I just don't know enough to decide what matters and what doesn't.

After spending so much time building the thing, we were quite sad not to know if was actually working or not! However, the upsides were: 

• it was cool making the turbine spin---the boys loved that, and it was impressively fast and powerful (better than our paper cup waterwheels).
• it was pretty fun to build---we liked wrapping wire and cutting spoons and so forth
• we really got a solid understanding of the parts of a generator. You always remember things better when you've handled them and worked with them; so now, for example, the boys don't forget which part is the stator and which is the rotor, or which part has the magnets, or why the turbine has to be attached to a shaft that turns the rotor, etc. I feel like I truly grasped those concepts for the first time as we were making it.

So I wouldn't say it was a waste of time, and I do think it was probably our mistakes that caused us to go wrong, not the instructions---they were pretty clear. (Though perhaps they could have been slightly clearer . . . ) This is a project we may attempt again later, when I've recovered from this time. :)

Flaming Gorge Dam

The culmination of our study of dams was a trip to Flaming Gorge Dam in Eastern Utah. Upon looking up our route on the map the day before we left, we were excited to see there would be two other dams and reservoirs along the way! The boys were looking out for them with their beady little eyes the whole time we drove. Here is the first, a small embankment dam called Mountain Dell, I think?

So lovely in the morning light!

And the next, also embankment, was Echo Dam and Reservoir. The water level here was really low!

We were also pleased to spot lots of windmills as we drove!

Flaming Gorge itself is gorgeous! (ha ha) It goes on for miles (we didn't nearly drive around it all)

We enjoyed driving across this bridge as we got close

From the top, the dam isn't that huge---I assumed the water wasn't that deep, maybe 100 feet or something. But once we got around to the other side . . . 

we could see that estimate was way off! I think our guide said it's 500 feet high. It's even a bit longer from side to side than Hoover Dam---though much, much shorter in height!

It was so exciting to see all the parts of the dam---we could hardly believe that the tour let us go into the powerhouse and see the generators at work! The children were SO curious about everything (the guide said she'd never seen children like them---er. . . I believe her exact words were that they were the "most dam knowledgeable" kids she'd encountered on this tour. Ha ha. :))

Power lines. It was stormy, and not too comforting to hear another guide tell ours as we left for our tour, "Just make sure you don't get hit by lightning!" This impressed the children greatly, and when they asked if the dam had been hit by lightning before, our guide replied, "Oh yes---lightning has hit the dam, the powerlines, the visitor's center---we all ended up on the floor after that one!" It added a delicious thrill to our visit.

Looking down

Sluice gates, leading to the penstocks

Inside the powerhouse---three big generators!

Malachi. That dark grey shape in the background is an old turbine.

Looking up from the bottom

These were interesting---hollow jet valves, I think they were called? They're an alternate release system, in addition to the spillway. They can bypass the turbines and let water out here if they need to work on the generators or release water pressure a bit. Our guide said these were in use all last summer. The spillway (not pictured---it's higher up), on the other hand, has only been used once, in 1983!

Here's the end of one of the diversion tunnels they used while constructing the dam

Reservoir from above

And, looking the other direction, the top of the dam

It was a great field trip, well worth the long drive and the late night getting home---especially since we got to enjoy views like this as we drove!