Lego Water Power

Humans today use a lot of energy, specially to keep the heat and light in our houses. One of our greatest energy sources comes from hydropower plants. Hydropower is based on allowing water to run at a high speed down to a turbine and cause it to spin. This turbine is connected to a generator which converts kinetic energy into electrical energy.

And then you wonder, what's kinetic and electric energy. Everything has energy (except vacuum), but objects may have different kinds of energy. From the sun comes light energy, from a bicycle standing on top of a hill comes the potential energy, from bananas you eat comes chemical energy and from the radiators in your house comes heat energy. There are more different kinds of energy, but I will not go through them all. In a water power plant different kinds of energy transformations happen, here they are: when the gaps for the water opens can potential energy convert to kinetic energy that causes water to flush down towards the turbine, when the water hits the turbine it is set in motion that put a generator in motion, the generator converts kinetic energy into electrical energy.

Hydropower plants are very important to stabilize our energy consumption and it may be important to know how the electricity you use every day actually comes to your home. Using this technique is nothing new, humans has used these methods for hundreds of years. It is only we who have modernized it.

I had a really fun time building it in LDD and I think it would be an evan better experience in real life. Please support if you like the project and please share to help this set reach 10 000 supporters!

Ps. I used Lego Digital Designer (LDD) and Prezi for this model