DIY Corner : Make your own Water Wheel

Hello science enthusiasts!

Are you enjoying our DIY activities? We can tell from your excited comments that you have been consciously trying out our experiments, and we couldn’t be happier!  After all, it is our aim to ensure that while you enjoy these activities, you get a firsthand experience as well and learn something off-beat in the process (not to forget; you get to show them off too, with pride). Hence, we research a lot and sometimes we perform these activities in our lab too. Only after that, we share with you the best DIY activities every month.

So gear up, as this month, we enter the wonderland of physics and try out this simple yet effective DIY activity.

You may have heard about natural resources and how they help us sustain our  everyday life. In fact, the house you live in, the food you consume or the car your parents drive are all made possible thanks to naturally available resources on Earth.

Take, for instance, the sun, which we can use to generate power from. Similarly, we can also use  running water to generate electricity. In fact, hydropower was one of the first ever sources of energy that was used to create electricity. It works by using the flow of water to move a turbine.

What is a Water Wheel?

A water wheel is a mini version of the actual method to generate hydropower. A water wheel usually consists of two large wooden or metal wheels that have paddles or buckets arranged along the outer edge or rim of the wheels. As the water flows, it pushes the wheel and therefore creates movement along the axle. The pace of the spinning wheel creates kinetic energy, which in turn gets converted into electricity.

Today, we are going to make a version of this water wheel to understand how the water actually turns the wheel without any external force.

Materials required:

• Dry foam piece
• 8-10 plastic spoons
• Two plastic plates
• 1 wooden skewer (or a wooden stick, cleaned and polished)
• 1 medium sized bucket
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Marker
• Safety glasses

Step one: Prepare the wheel

• Take one plastic spoon and the dry foam piece.
• With the help of the ruler and  marker, trace the width of the spoon on the foam.

• Take one plastic plate and adjust the foam in the centre.
• With the help of the scissors, cut out the foam into a circle. While doing this, remember these three points:
  •  The width of the foam should be same as the spoon
  • The foam should be smaller than the plate
  • The foam needs to be placed in the centre of the plate.

Note: You need to take help of adults while cutting the foam.

Step Two: Make the paddles 

• Cut each plastic spoon into half and make sure all of them are  about the same size.

Note: You NEED to wear your safety glasses in this step to avoid any accidents.

Step Three: Add the paddles

• Now stick each spoon into the dry foam with the help of glue. You can also simply push the spoons into the dry foam instead of sticking them with a glue.

• Make sure that all the spoons are facing the same direction and are evenly spaced around the disk.

Step Four: Make a stand

• Take the two plastic plates and the dry form with the spoons attached.
• Now, with the help of the marker and ruler, circle the centre points of the plastic plates and the dry form.

• Carefully cut a small hole in each item. The hole must be large enough for the wooden skewer to go through easily, but small enough so that it fits perfectly.

Step Five: Stick them together

• Now you have all the parts ready! Stick the dry foam with the spoons in between the two plastic plates (like a sandwich!) Make sure that the centre points of all the three parts are in line.

• Insert the wooden skewer through the centre of your wheel. Secure all the loose points with glue to make the wheel rigid.

Step Six: Set the wheel on motion

• It’s time to test your water wheel. You can try out this experiment in your washroom or any other place where you have easy access to water.
• Take a medium sized bucket and place the wheel with the wooden skewer on top of it.
• Now slowly pour the water in a way that it fills up the spoon, which is on top.
• You will notice that as soon as the spoon gets filled up, it automatically moves to let the next empty spoon come on top until the next one gets filled.

• If you increase the speed in which you are pouring the water, you will see that the wheel will start spinning faster.

Will you try out this experiment? What else did you learn from this process? Do tell us in the comments below.