The Three Gorges Dam stretches across the Yangtze River in China like a wall built by giants. It is 7,661 feet long and 607 feet tall, and the lake behind it is 410 miles long - about the same as driving from Boston to Washington, D.C. It’s the largest power-generating dam in the world.
Inside the dam, 32 huge turbines spin as water rushes through. Together they make more electricity than any other power plant on the planet, lighting up tens of millions of homes. The dam also helps control flooding on a river that used to drown villages every few years.
Here’s the strange part. NASA scientists worked out that pushing so much water up to a higher place actually changes how Earth spins. It’s a tiny change - just a fraction of a microsecond per day - but it really happens. Building the dam made our planet’s day a little bit longer.
