engineering

Woodhead Dam

Woodhead Dam is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Woodhead Dam rather than just read about it. In short: Woodhead Dam is a dam on Table Mountain, Western Cape, South Africa. It was built in 1897 and supplies water to Cape Town.

Key takeaways

Woodhead Dam belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Woodhead Dam to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Woodhead Dam from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Woodhead Dam is a dam on Table Mountain, Western Cape, South Africa. It was built in 1897 and supplies water to Cape Town. The dam, which was the first large masonry dam in South Africa, was designated as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2008.

History

In 1870, the growth of Cape Town led to shortages of drinking water. It was decided to build a reservoir on Table Mountain to provide water to the city. Scottish hydraulic engineer Thomas Stewart was engaged to design and build the reservoir. The Woodhead Tunnel was built between 1888 and 1891. It was used to divert the Disa Stream, a tributary of the Hout Bay River, westward to provide water for the reservoir. An aerial cableway was constructed to transport men and materials to the construction site. The dam was constructed between 1894 and 1897. This dam was followed by four others in the area. The Hely-Hutchinson Dam and reservoir were built by 1904 just upstream of the Woodhead reservoir. The Alexandra Dam and Victoria Dam were built on the original Disa Stream by 1903. The last of the five dams was the De Villiers Dam in 1907. This was built downstream of the Alexandra and Victoria Dams. Today, these five dams supply around 0.4% of the water for Cape Town.

Design The Woodhead Tunnel is 640 m (2,100 ft) long. The Woodhead Dam is a masonry gravity dam that is 277 m (909 ft) long and 50 m (164 ft) high. It has a free overspill spillway with a capacity of 20 m3/s (706 ft3/s). The reservoir has a capacity of 927,000 m3 (32,737,000 ft3) and a surface area of 13 ha (32 acres).

See also List of reservoirs and dams in South Africa

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Woodhead Dam

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Woodhead Dam claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Woodhead Dam before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Woodhead Dam ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Woodhead Dam

In research: Woodhead Dam appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Woodhead Dam in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Woodhead Dam is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 19th-century architecture in South Africa, Buildings and structures in Cape Town, Dams completed in 1897, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Woodhead Dam outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Woodhead Dam in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Woodhead Dam means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Woodhead Dam out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Woodhead Dam in simple terms?

Woodhead Dam is a dam on Table Mountain, Western Cape, South Africa. It was built in 1897 and supplies water to Cape Town.

Why does Woodhead Dam matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Woodhead Dam?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Woodhead Dam.