The Hidden Engineering of Niagara Falls
practical.engineering
practical.engineering
The Welland canal is also very interesting. There's something really cool about seeing a large ship moving _on_ a bridge while driving under that same bridge with a car. Also, the city of Welland has some nice bike trails iirc.
Also, not sure if this is true, but our tour guide told us that Tesla himself actually never set foot on the Canadian side of the falls.
I didn't know anything about the engineering surrounding the Niagara Falls region, but this latest video leaves me curious about how the two countries managed to work together in those early years, with all of the disputes and collaborations involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcXkmvXXwU
When people complain, "every time I see road workers they're just standing around." Well watch this series and see the number of different crews and steps it takes to do major construction.
His favorite story from the last time they "shut the falls off" was that they found tons of loose change in the rocks around the rapids - people were racing to get it and bringing back buckets of money. (Of course, they also found a few bodies as well...)
And so I looked it up and it was correct. Almost all of the water that would go over the falls is redirected to power generation. A secondary good effect is that this reduces erosion of the falls - before this they were eroding and moving up river at least three feet per year and eventually would reach Lake Ontario which would empty the lake.
You mean Lake Erie, don't you?
The Niagara River flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, forming part of the border between Ontario, Canada, to the west, and New York, United States, to the east. [...]
The river [...] is approximately 58 kilometres (36 mi) long and includes the Niagara Falls.
It's not often we witness a large-scale geographic shift - while obviously we needed to preserve the lake in this scenario, imagine watching this unfold as a great lake disappears. That would be a sight to see! (Granted, assuming 36 miles between the falls and the lake, that would happen ~60,000 years from now)
It wouldn't empty the lake. It would merely erode away the escarpment so that water flowed smoothly from one lake to the other.
If the search link doesn't work, search for Niagara in the photo gallery.
It’s one of my favourite places to go, and definitely where I take anyone visiting from abroad.
Go Bills.