Saturday, May 21, 2011

Top 10 Dams In The World

Man made dams represent some of the most incredible architectural feats in the world today. While most dams were designed to impound or retain water, others (like floodgates and levees) are often used to control water flow into certain areas.
hoover-dam-overlook



Regardless of how they’re used no one will question the sheer power and force each dam holds. One crack or failure – one mistake in control – could easily cause a catastrophic accident with the potential to wipe out an entire city.
The following are some of the largest dams in the world as measured by sheer volume. While they’re not all necessarily in the “top 10″ in terms of size, they’re certainly sights worth visiting.

10. Srisailam Dam – India

srisailam-reservoir


Located on the Krishna River, the Srisailam Dam was constructed in the Nallamala Hills in a gorge that sits approximately 300 meters above sea level. The dam was is one of the 12 largest in the country in terms of hydroelectric power production but was specifically built in order to provide irrigation for the districts of Kurnool and Cuddapah – both of which are prone to severe droughts.

9. Nagarjuna Sagar – India

nagarjuna-sagar-india


The Nagarjuna Sagar Dam can be found in the Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh in India. Considered one of the largest ever built in Asia, this dam was completed in 1966 and features 26 individual crest gates. As far as construction is concerned, this dam is the tallest in the world to be made strictly from masonry and its creation resulted in the third largest man-made lake on the globe.  The dam and its canals are incredibly important to the ability to irrigate nearby land.

8. Verzasca Dam – Switzerland

verzasca-dam


The Verzasca Dam, also known as the Contra dam, was built between 1960 and 1965 in Val Verzasca, Switzerland. The dam was built by Verzasca SA, a company that generates electricity on the site and will continue to do so until at least 2046. The Lago di Vogorno reservoir is artificial, created by the dam itself, and has been responsible for causing earthquakes during times when it is filled.


Flightnetwork.com - Specializing in Cheap Flights

7. Ataturk Dam – Turkey

ataturk-dam


Completed in 1990, the Ataturk Dam in Turkey is a rock-fill dam found on the Euphrates River. Originally named the Karababa Dam, the site was later renamed in order to honor the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The dam is responsible for irrigating the regions plains as well as for generating electricity.

6. Mangla Dam – Pakistan



The twelfth largest dam in the world was built in 1967 and was funded in part by the World Bank. The Mangla Dam came into creation thanks to the 1960 signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in which rights to the waters contained in the Ravi, Beas, and Suglej rivers were given to Pakistan. Before the dam was built Pakistan’s irrigation system relied solely on the flow of the Indus River – most of which was completely unregulated.

5. Tarbela – Pakistan



Completed back in 1976, the Tarbela Dam, also known as Torabela or Pashto, is considered to be the largest dam ever constructed on Pakistan’s Indus River. While it’s not the largest dam in the world overall, it is the largest dam filled naturally by the earth. The dam stores water in order to not only control flooding but for use in irrigation and the production of hydro-electric energy as well.

4. Fort PeckUnited States

fort-peck-dam


The Fort Peck Dam in northeast Montana is one of six dams found on the Missouri River. Construction of this dam began in 1933 as part of the New Deal put forth by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and enabled over 11,000 workers to have gainful employment during the course of construction. The dam, which is solely responsible for the formation of Fort Peck Lake, is used to control flooding and generate power.

3. Aswan Dam – Egypt

view-from-the-aswan-dam


The Aswan Dam is actually a pair of dams – the Aswan High Dam and the Aswan Low Dam. In ancient times it was known that the River Nile would flood each summer as the waters flowed down from East Africa. As the population along the river grew it became necessary to find a way to control flooding in this area. Now the land is still fertile enough for farming and the people no longer have to worry about drought but the fields aren’t in danger of being wiped out due to flooding, either.

2. Syncrude Tailings – Canada

syncrude-mildred-lake-plant
Located near Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, the Syncrude Tailings Dam is approximately 540,000,000 meters in volume. The dam is currently maintained by a company known as Syncrude Canada Ltd – a company responsible for oil extraction in the Athabasca Oil Sands. The dam serves as a barrage used to store tailings – or leftover slimes and residues – that appear as byproducts of the oil extraction operation.

1. Three Gorges – China


three-gorges-dam

The Three Gorges Dam in China is projected to be the absolute largest in the world. Expected to hold over 39,300,000,000 in volume, the reservoir is complete but the actual dam itself will not be completed until later this year. The construction of this dam had a huge impact on life in Sandouping, resulting not only in the relocation of dozens of villages but in the scenery as well. Because of the height of the Three Gorges Dam the mountains now look a bit lower than they actually are.
These dams are not only amongst the largest, but are considered some of the most functional, beautiful, and aesthetically pleasing in the world. Don’t hesitate to visit one if you’re ever in the area. Seeing one of the enormous dams in person will prove to be an absolutely breathtaking experience.

Top 10 Grass Mazes In The World

Longleat Hedge Maze (UK)

Made up of more than 16,000 english yews, Longleat’s spectacular hedge maze --the world’s longest-- was first laid out in 1975 by designer Greg Bright. The Maze covers an area of around 1.48 acres (0.6 hectares) with a total pathway length of 1.69 miles (2.72 kilometres). Unlike most other conventional mazes, it’s actually three-dimensional, with six wooden bridges offering tantalizing glimpses towards the elusive centre of the maze, which is marked by an observation tower for visitors who manage to find it.


Reignac-sur-Indre Maze (France)

In 1996, the year this plant maze --the world's largest-- was created at Reignac-sur-Indre in Touraine, 85,000 visitors came to admire and lose themselves in the middle of its 4-hectare (10-acre) expanse. Each year, a maze of corn or sunflowers emerges from the ground over the summer, is harvested in the autumn, and then reappears the following year in a different form, thanks to a well-proven technique of sowing and marking out.


York Maze, a Star Trek tribute (UK)

Containing 1.5 million individual plants, this maze --just outside York-- covers 32 acres, the equivalent of 15 football pitches, and was designed using satellite technology, which meant the paths could be cut to an accuracy of half a metre. The huge maze was created by Tom Pearcy as a tribute to the 40th anniversary of Star Trek.
Flightnetwork.com - Specializing in Cheap Flights

Ashcombe Maze (Australia)

Ashcombe Maze is Australia’s oldest and most famous traditional hedge maze, located at Shoreham on the east of the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Measuring three meters high by two meters wide, the gardens also boast the world’s oldest rose maze, which blooms 217 varieties of roses on 1,200 bushes.


Pineapple Garden Maze (Hawaii)

World’s largest maze, according to the Guinness Book of Records 2001, the Pineapple Garden Maze offers over three miles of paths on three acres. Instead of a traditional English hedge, it is planted with 14,000 colorful Hawaiian plants, including hibiscus, croton, panax, pineapple and heliconia. It is located in Wahiawa, Hawaii at Dole Plantation and certainly looks scary from the air.

Snake Maze (UK)

Michael Blee, 62, spent several months creating this six-acre maze at Gore Farm in Upchurch, near Rochester, Kent. Its hedges stand 9ft tall. This is the 10th and the most complicated maze Mr. Blee has ever done. He is hoping his giant game makes it into the Guinness Book of Records.


Il Labirinto (Italy)

Created in the early 1700s, Il Labirinto is said to be one of the most complicated labyrinths in the world. Located in the town of Stra, just outside Venice on the grounds of Villa Pisani, the legend says Napoleon got "lost" in it around 1807.


Peace Maze (Ireland)

This Irish maze was officially opened in 2001. The largest permanent hedge maze in the world, it covers an area of 11,000m2 --2.7 acres, or, 1.1 hectares. The path length is 3147m (2 miles or 3443 yards). The hedge is constructed from 6000 yew trees, many of which were planted during December 2000 by people from all over Northern Ireland.


Hampton Court Maze (UK)

The Maze at Hampton Court, the royal palace on the Thames to the west of London, is probably UK's most famous one. Planted as part of the gardens laid out for William of Orange between 1689 and 1695 by George London and Henry Wise, it covers an area of a third of an acre (about 1350 sq meters), with paths of over half a mile (0.8 km) long. It was described with great wit in Jerome K. Jerome's novel 'Three Men in a Boat.' Hampton Court Maze continues to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.


Davis' Mega Maze (USA)

Davis' Mega Maze in Sterling, Massachusetts, has been a popular seasonal attraction since 1998. Davis' Farmland, a seventh-generation family-owned farm, holds this unique maze that changes completely from year to year. Designed in Dorset, England, by maze designer Adrian Fisher who is often credited with creating the modern maize maze craze, the Mega Maze takes more than 12,800 labor hours to be created each year.

Fun With Palindromes

A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same forward as it does backward. The words a and I are perhaps the simplest and least interesting palindromes; the word racecar and the name Hannah are more interesting and illustrative. Neither spaces nor punctuation are usually taken into consideration when constructing sentences that are palindromes -- one of the most famous palindromes is "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama" -- but when the spaces are properly positioned as well, so much the better. An example would be the also famous palindrome "Able was I ere I saw Elba," purportedly spoken by Napoleon, referring to his first sighting of Elba, the island where the British exiled him.
Intellectual Property Resources

Palindromes are a type of palingram called letter palingrams. A palingram is a sentence in which the letters, syllables, or words read the same backward as they do forward. The sentence, "He was, was he?" is a word palingram, because the words can be placed in reverse order and still read the same. The sentence, "I did, did I?" is not only a word palingram but a letter palingram (or palindrome) as well.
A number of interesting palindromes are given below for your amusement. Can you make up your own?

Words

  • aibohphobia
  • alula
  • cammac
  • civic
  • deified
  • deleveled
  • detartrated
  • devoved
  • dewed
  • evitative
  • Hannah
  • kayak
  • kinnikinnik
  • lemel
  • level
  • madam
  • Malayalam
  • minim
  • murdrum
  • peeweep
  • racecar
  • radar
  • redder
  • refer
  • reifier
  • repaper
  • reviver
  • rotator
  • rotavator
  • rotor
  • sagas
  • solos
  • sexes
  • stats
  • tenet
  • terret
  • testset

Places

  • Glenelg (Australia)
  • Kanakanak (Alaska)
  • Kinikinik (Colorado)
  • Navan (Meath, Ireland)
  • Neuquen (Argentina)
  • Ward Draw (South Dakota)
  • Wassamassaw (South Carolina)
  • Yreka Bakery (Yreka, California)

Not Quite Legitimate

  • Retteb, si flahd noces eht tub, but the second half is better.
  • Doctor Reubenstein was shocked and dismayed when he answered the ringing telephone, only to hear a strange, metallic, alien voice say, "Yasec iovn eilacilla temeg! Nartsa raehoty lnoenoh pelet gnig, nirehtde rewsnaehn ehw. Deya! Msid! Dnadek cohssaw nietsne buerro, tcod?"

Phrases and Sentences

  • A dog, a plan, a canal: pagoda.
  • A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.
  • A new order began, a more Roman age bred Rowena.
  • A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita.
  • A Toyota. Race fast, safe car. A Toyota.
  • Able was I ere I saw Elba.
  • Animal loots foliated detail of stool lamina.
  • Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna.
  • Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
  • Are we not pure? "No sir!" Panama's moody Noriega brags. "It is garbage!" Irony dooms a man; a prisoner up to new era.
  • As I pee, sir, I see Pisa!
  • Barge in! Relate mere war of 1991 for a were-metal Ernie grab!
  • Bombard a drab mob.
  • Bush saw Sununu swash sub.
  • Cain: a maniac.
  • Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.
  • Daedalus: nine. Peninsula: dead.
  • Dammit, I'm mad!
  • Delia saw I was ailed.
  • Denim axes examined.
  • Dennis and Edna sinned.
  • Depardieu, go razz a rogue I draped.
  • Desserts, I stressed!
  • Did I draw Della too tall, Edward? I did?
  • Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw, sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I -- lo! -- rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God!
  • Doc, note I dissent: a fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.
  • Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard.
  • Drat Saddam, a mad dastard!
  • Draw, O coward!
  • Draw pupil's lip upward.
  • Ed, I saw Harpo Marx ram Oprah W. aside.
  • Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?
  • Evil did I dwell; lewd I did live.
  • Gateman sees name, garageman sees name tag.
  • Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog.
  • Goldenrod-adorned log.
  • Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog.
  • Harass sensuousness, Sarah.
  • I roamed under it as a tired, nude Maori.
  • Laminated E.T. animal.
  • Lay a wallaby baby ball away, Al.
  • Lepers repel.
  • Let O'Hara gain an inn in a Niagara hotel.
  • Live not on evil.
  • Lived on Decaf; faced no Devil.
  • Lonely Tylenol.
  • Ma is a nun, as I am.
  • Ma is as selfless as I am.
  • Madam, I'm Adam.
  • Madam in Eden, I'm Adam.
  • Marge lets Norah see Sharon's telegram.
  • May a moody baby doom a yam.
  • Meet animals; laminate 'em.
  • Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.
  • Murder for a jar of red rum.
  • Never odd or even.
  • No, Mel Gibson is a casino's big lemon.
  • No cab, no tuna nut on bacon.
  • No lemon, no melon.
  • No sir -- away! A papaya war is on.
  • On a clover, if alive, erupts a vast, pure evil; a fire volcano.
  • Party boobytrap.
  • Poor Dan is in a droop.
  • Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.
  • Rise to vote, sir.
  • Saw tide rose? So red it was.
  • Senile felines.
  • So many dynamos!
  • Some men interpret nine memos.
  • Stab nail at ill Italian bats.
  • Stack cats.
  • Stella won no wallets.
  • Step on no pets.
  • Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots!
  • Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts.
  • T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot-toilet.
  • Tarzan raised Desi Arnaz' rat.
  • Ten animals I slam in a net.
  • Too bad I hid a boot.
  • Was it a car or a cat I saw?
  • Wonder if Sununu's fired now.
  • Won't I panic in a pit now?
  • Won't lovers revolt now?
  • Yo, banana boy!
  • Yo, Bob! Mug o' gumbo, boy!
  • Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.)