Essay on Hydropower and What Water Wheels Are Used For

📌Category: Science, Technology
📌Words: 1556
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 05 September 2020

The water wheel has many uses; it works by converting the power of flowing water, also known as hydropower. In 4000 B.C. a man named Vitruvius invented the water wheel. Since the invention, it has served many purposes all over the world, mostly to provide power to complex machines. The Romans and people from ancient China, India and medieval Europe, all used the water wheel. They used it for many reasons, maybe it was to crush an object or make paper, flour or fabrics. The water wheel had many purposes and it helped many people along the way to where the economy is now. The water wheel was mainly used for farming, mining, and crushing. It made a job effortless and quick, resulting in more work being done.

Water wheels have been very important to this world for many years. People today still use water wheels. It is one of the first inventions on Earth. It showed how technology improved conditions in our world in many ways just through using it. The water wheel was the start of hydropower and hydraulic dams. This invention demonstrates how hydropower can be used and what it was used for. The water wheel is also important because it helped many villages with finishing a job that needed to be done faster and it was made easier. The water wheel helped the world in some cases with their economy.

Hydroelectric power is a form of hydropower. Hydropower is the movement of water used to power something on. In a hydropower facility the movement of water is used to turn turbines and power generators to create electricity. Hydropower is a very important part of water wheels; it is the reason why water wheels work. Hydropower was made in 1879, before then people used mechanical energy. The movement of the water moves the water wheel and moves gears to do the work. Flowing water moves the water turbines and creates electricity. The gears might be attached to a crusher, or a tool to create fabric for clothes. To do everything it did, hydropower was used for water wheels.

Hydropower is a large source of renewable power. It is a large source of renewable power, because the water it uses is a clean fuel source. Even if you have to buy land for water, it is renewable. It can be reused when the water evaporates, it comes back in either a snow or rain form. The water wheel would most likely be placed somewhere near a waterfall because of the movement of water. The water wheel might have been expensive, but the water was accessible. Hydropower was also very fast for farmers and miners to use. The amount of electricity generated depends on how far the water drops for the turbines. So, the water wheels have usually been placed near waterfalls because of the falling water or fast-moving rivers.

Hydropower is how electricity forms by using turbines it would turn gears or crush things. The wheel turns because of moving water, and the water makes a generator work to make electricity. When the gears were moving that’s when everything started to work. The gears would do any action to make it faster than the average person. Sometimes the water wheel would be so efficient that it would do more work than 50 people at once. Farmers and miners already work a long and hard-working day so they would use their water wheel, so they could work on other activities. Farmers would use it for mills and their crops. Miners would use it for pumping water and crushing rocks. It helped a large amount of villages and companies. The economy was especially involved with the water wheel.

If the water wheel had a big enough diameter and was tall enough, it could power on a modern house. Some villages and towns would use water wheels to power on buildings. If a small house needed electricity the water wheel would only need to be three feet tall. If a building needed more electricity than a house, then there would be either multiple water wheels working or taller wheels. This is so it can generate power and move the turbines. Water wheels were soon the new invention to use, everyone used it. People used it for making food, roads, electricity or even farming.

The economy was greatly affected when the water wheel was invented and used in almost all the villages and townships. Everyone realized how easy it was to produce something by using the water wheel. When most people started using the wheel it became more accessible, to make more paper, flour, rocks, or clothes. Farmers decided to build more mills and some people used it to power on their appliances inside their house. This resulted in selling more mills, lakes, and properties. Creating these items became easier, and the sales started to rise high. The water wheel was a big invention of its time. There were many ways the water wheel was used, and it really helped make the work done more efficiently.  The water wheel greatly affected the economy and here are some ways that it was used.

Farming crops was and still is a lot of hard work, but when the water wheel was invented it made farming easier. Farmers would do something called irrigating crops. That is a way to grow crops with water for agricultural reasons. It helped mainly when there wasn’t any rainfall for the plants to grow. Often farmers were not able to grow rice because of the many water droughts. With the water wheel they could grow rice without worrying about not having water to grow crops. It gave framers the ability to have a gristmill and mill food like corn and flour. The water wheels would be next to the mill and power on gears that would grind grains and make it into corn and flour.

Another way that the water wheel was used for was mining. Mining was very important that the demand for metals and rocks kept increasing. This started to become a problem so miners started to use the water wheel. Mining was also very dangerous, and the water wheel gave an effortless way to pump out water. With the water wheel they used it to pump water from the mines when it was flooded, so they could get back to work. When the water wheel was invented mining became a little safer than before. Miners would mine the rocks and metals to smelt them, the water wheels also helped with mining. The invention of the water wheel helped mining become more efficient.

Smelting was used after mining the rocks and metals and was another way that the water wheel was used. The miners would get the metals and then have to extract the ores out themselves. The smelting job took too much time. Luckily the water wheel would power a gear to extract the ore from many metals. Metals like iron, silver, and copper were mined and then got smelted. Smelting is to extract a metal from its ore by heating. Something that people get confused about is the difference between smelting and melting. Smelting extracts ores out of rocks and metals while melting turns substances into liquid. The water wheel was also used with a stamping battery to crush rocks and minerals. These rocks would later be used to create more roads for villages.

The water wheel also gave participation for sawing wood. Sawing with the wheel was very common and simple to use, it was called the sawing mill or timber mill. The water would move the turbines and then the wheel would move a gear. The wood would be brought in, and the gears would cut off the edges. Then, it would trim a little piece of the wood. The gear would then move a saw back and forth. The saw would cut the timber from logs. After that, the timber would dry, and it would get smoothened. They used the saw to cut wood for a couple things. The wood could be for the fireplace in the house. Or could have also been for building a machine or a house. Wood could have also been used for fuels or making furniture. The wood could have been used many ways.

Another way that the water wheel was used was making paper. Making paper in a factory is called a paper mill. The wheels would be set up next to a paper mill. Some of the ingredients crushed were wood pulp and cotton. The ingredients would get melted together into a soup-like mixture, then get ready for the water wheel to do its job. When the ingredients got melted it was then made into paper. This wheel would have gears that would crush the fibers together to then make paper.

There are also the fabrics that clothes are made out of. Without fabrics-that makes the clothes-there would be nothing to wear. The cotton was spun or was woven with the help of the water wheel. People worked with the machines, but a machine was able to work much faster than multiple people. Thanks to the water wheel it could quickly create fabrics. After the fabrics were made, it got sewn and made into clothes. There were cotton mills where they created clothes out of cotton and clothes were also made out of wool. Farmers and businesses would own something called a textile mill that would make cotton. The water wheel made a more efficient way to make clothing.

The water wheel greatly affected the economy in its own way. The wheel served many different purposes and was very helpful for everyone. There was no wrong reason to use the waterwheel. Everyone used it in a different way. Everyone used the water wheel at one point to get a job done or use electricity. Whether or not it was crushing, sawing or extracting, the water wheel was very useful. Now people use hydropower in hydraulic dams, which means the water wheel was the push to start using more hydropower.

 

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