Chickamauga Dam and GIS by Isabelle T. and Sarah F.

Chickamauga Dam Tour 

Today the freshmen Tucker River fellows toured the Chickamauga Dam on the Tennessee River. We got to explore things like turbines, locks, and even went 80 feet under headwater! 

At the beginning of the day, we got a generalization about how the water flows through the dam to create energy. The turbine converts the kinetic energy of water into mechanical energy. A generator then converts this mechanical energy into electrical energy. We were able to go inside the turbine and see the water being spun.

Next we took a tour of the outside of the dam. We walked along the construction and saw the differing sides of the river.

While walking along the concrete, a barge approached and we watched it go through the lock. The barge had to split into two sections because the lock is too small, so they are building a new system. We watched the water level between the two locks lower so the lock could open and let the barge through.

After that, we went to look at the generators. These generate energy and make the hydroelectric power.

We then proceeded to the elevator where we went 80 feet below the headwater into a cave-like passage that held some of the controls and oil storage rooms.

During this tour, we saw many things that expanded our knowledge of the water and how it is generated. We learned how a turbine creates energy, where the river trash is disposed through a gate, and even things such as the level of humidity in the dam! This was a great experience all-around, and we can’t wait for more!

Learning about GIS

On Wednesday after an interesting tour of the Chickamauga Dam the freshmen Tucker River Fellows went to UTC to learn about Geographic Information System (GIS). Andy Carol helped navigate us through this college-level topic. He helped simplifying GIS through a straightforward tutorial. We learned to use GIS on an app called GIS Collector.

link to water trails: TN water trails

 GIS is a resourceful tool that can be used on a day to day basis. We were able to play around with the app after the lecture and tutorial. We were able to learn much about the Chattanooga area; everything from the amount of people that tweet in an area to what is the best route to take when kayaking down the Hiwassee River. Over all GIS was a very engaging topic that we all loved to learn about!