Word: Water Turbine
Situation: an electrical engineer explains to undergraduate students, in a lecture, in general studies, what a water turbine and how an electrical dam creates energy with the turbines.
Parenthetical Definition: The dam holds seven water turbines (spinning engines with blades) that produce electricity.
Sentence Definition: The dam holds seven water turbines. Water turbines are spinning engines with blades driven by pressure, momentum or reactive thrust of a moving fluid, such as a stream, water, gases, or air.
Expanded Definition:
The dam holds seven water turbines. A water turbine is a rotary engine that converts a moving fluid’s energy into mechanical energy by spinning the bladed motor.
Water turbines were created and used in the 19th century for industrial power before creating electrical power grids. Currently, they are used to generate electricity. The first occurrence of water turbine use was in the roman empire dating to the late 3rd AD. (Wikipedia)
Water wheels have been used for hundreds of years, early examples of water turbines, but the word turbine was first used and introduced by a French engineer Claude Buedin in the early 19th century to describe an early version of a water turbine, which he got from the Greek word for whirling or vortex (Wikipedia).
Water turbines work by having directed flowing water, directed by the penstock in the dam, and placed onto the turbine’s blades, which creates a force on the blades, causing them to spin, transferring the energy from the water to the turbine. The blades’ rotation causes copper wire in the engine to rotate while being surrounded by magnets, which creates an electrical current. This rotation of the blades and copper is known as a rotary engine simply because it rotates. There are two types of water turbines being reaction and impulse.
– Reaction turbines develop power from the combined action of pressure and moving water. The turbine must be placed directly in the water stream (Types of Hydropower Turbines)
– Impulse turbines that use the velocity of water to move the blades. The water stream hits each blade without any suction on the downside of the turbine. (Type of Hydropower Turbines)
References:
Wikipedia contributors. (2021, January 14). Turbine. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine#:%7E:text=The%20word%20%22turbine%22%20was%20coined,royale%20des%20sciences%20in%20Paris.
Types of Hydropower Turbines. (n.d.). Energy.Gov. https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/types-hydropower-turbines#:%7E:text=A%20reaction%20turbine%20develops%20power,rather%20than%20striking%20each%20individually.
Image Reference:
- (2021, January 25). HYDROELECTRICITY. Ikonet. http://rachitsharma17.blogspot.com/2015/05/hydroelectricity-term-referring-to.html
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