🚀 Inventions and machines 🏗️ Buildings and structures

Dams

📖 In short

A dam is a huge structure built across a river to hold water back. People collect water in the rainy season to use in dry times, for drinking and farming. Some dams are small and made of earth, and some are huge and made of concrete, as tall as skyscrapers.

🤩 Did you know?

The Gordon Dam in Tasmania is one of Australia's biggest dams.
Some dam power stations produce thousands of megawatts of electricity.
A dam is built thick at the bottom because that's where the water pressure is greatest.
The Marib Dam in Yemen is one of the oldest dams in the world.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 A lake behind the dam

When a dam is built, water rises behind it and forms a big lake. Water is taken from this lake through channels to towns and farms.

🔍 Electricity from water

Many dams have power stations: water rushes down from behind the dam and turns big wheels called turbines, which make clean electricity.

💡 Famous dams

Egypt has the Aswan High Dam on the Nile, which protects against floods and makes Lake Nasser. China's Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydroelectric power station in the world. And Yemen has the remains of the ancient Marib Dam.