Vienna Science Museum

The most interesting thing I found at the museum were the different types of turbines used for power generation. There are many ways to create rotation motion, with different advantages and disadvantages. One of the types of turbines is a Pelton Wheel. This is a wheel with scoops all around the radius of the wheel. Each scoop has a razor sharp edge in order to split the water more efficiently and have more energy go into spinning the wheel. It was interesting to see how sharp the wheel actually had to be to be as efficient as possible. Another type of generator turbine was the impeller. These impellers are very similar to regular propellers except that they are housed in a casing with a very small gap between the tips of the blades and the inside of the wall. Each Turbine design is specifically made for a single use scenario to get the best efficiency out of it.