In Water Engineering
Dissipation is the process of converting mechanical energy of downward-flowing water into thermal and acoustical energy. Various devices are designed in streambeds to reduce the kinetic energy of flowing waters to reduce their erosive potential on banks and river bottoms. Very often these devices look like small waterfalls or cascades, where water flows vertically or over riprap to lose some of its kinetic energy.
Read more about this topic: Dissipation
Famous quotes containing the words water and/or engineering:
“But oh, not the hills of Habersham,
And oh, not the valleys of Hall
Avail: I am fain for to water the plain.
Downward, the voices of Duty call—
Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,
And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o’er the hills of Habersham,
Calls through the valleys of Hall.”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.”
—Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)