Keeping the wheels in motion

Timothy Christian eighth grader Jacob Olthoff has always had a natural curiosity for science: he likes to take things apart, rebuild them and figure out how they work. Recently, his inquisitiveness led him to create a science fair project, “How the Placement of the Water Source Affects the Speed and Torque of a Water Wheel,” that placed in the top 10 percent of all entries at the state competition.
 
“A friend of ours from church gave me a book on architecture, and I saw multiple designs of water wheels in there. I was interested in the differences between them,” Olthoff said.
 
For the project, Olthoff tested the torque and speed of a water wheel, which he custom built himself from scrap wood and coating, in four different positions: overshot, pitch back, breastshot and undershot. He found through his experiments that the overshot had the greatest speed and torque of all four positions, and the pitch back position had slightly reduced speed but equal torque. The breast shot had less speed and torque, and unfortunately, the undershot would not work without significantly changing the amount of water flow and in turn skewing the results.
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.