Background

The experiment that I had to opportunity to perform in class was Simulated Dam Pressure, created by Sonia Hubbard and Casey Donovan. The goal of the experimental design was to explore potential energy as it relates to the generation of hydroelectric power. According to the lab manual, hydropower accounts for 17% of the world’s energy and has been in use since the early 1800’s. Generation of electricity depends upon the force of falling water that is concentrated into a fast-moving dam. This also functions to avoid floods when it creates a reservoir. The use of hydropower presents a dilemma because while it is a clean source of energy, dams create a disruption within the environment.

Procedure

This lab required an empty water or milk jug, nails of three different circumferences (in this case 0.1 cm, 0.2 cm, and 0.4), duct tape, a ruler, tape measure, and a permanent marker

Carrying out the experiment was relatively simple because the “lowest”, “middle”, and “top” holes were already marked on the empty jug. All that had to be done was for a lab partner to volunteer to carefully poke a nail through the plastic. After this, the hole was temporarily patched with duct tape and then filled with water. For a timer, we used a phone. I did not see the initial water height marked with the permanent marker but it was my task to monitor the reservoir height while my lab partner kept track of stream height. We quickly noticed, that over the time span of five minutes recording stream and reservoir height became increasingly more difficult as the water flow quickened. Therefore, the data may represent approximated values due to the estimation of all of the measurements. In this specific case, one of the people had to be present and play an active role in monitoring the time and telling us how to correctly organize the data.

Although this simulation is ambitious in its goal of simulating the creation of hydroelectric power, it was difficult to turn the physical appearance of the measurements into numbers to take down onto our lab notebooks. Also, the data tables posed a challenge due to the various replications and calculations. While realizing the value of replication, this experiment uses itin excess, making a rather simple analysis into a complicated one.

 

Analysis

As expected, the largest hole of 0.4 cm created the largest amount of pressure which may correlate to created the largest amount of hydroelectric power. As the reservoir height decreased, the stream length from the hole also decreased. Although the circumference of the hole caused the water to run much quicker, there wasn’t a significant change in the numbers recorded in the data tables.