If you're one of our regular listeners of 30 animals that made us smarter, you'll

know that I often start each episode by telling you about a particular animal.

For this episode, however, I'm going to do something a little different.

Instead of introducing an animal, I'm going to tell you about an incredible engineering project,

one that became fully operational in China nearly a decade ago.

But this is no ordinary engineering project.

It's been described as a country's most ambitious construction since the building of the

Great Wall of China, which itself stretches for over 20,000 kilometres.

So it seems this thing might be a bit of a big deal.

The impact of this project is so profound, it's not only changed the life of millions of people

and had a significant effect on China's ecosystem, it's also altered the Earth's rotation.

I'm talking about the three gorgeous dam on the Yangtze River, the world's largest capacity

hydroelectric power station and the scale of this massive project can be hard to get your head around.

A dam is nearly two and a half kilometres long and a hundred and eighteen metres tall.

To build it, engineers used 28 million cubic metres of concrete in nearly half a million tons

of steel. That is enough to build more than 60 Eiffel Towers.

The actual hydropower plant within the project has 32 turbine generator units,

which along with two additional smaller generators means it has the capacity to produce a whopping

22,500 megawatts of electricity, making it the most productive hydroelectric dam in the world.

In building the dam, the Chinese government weren't just concerned with generating electricity

to fuel the country's rapid economic growth. They also wanted to prevent possible flooding risks.

The Yangtze River is Asia's longest, stretching 6,300 kilometres from its source on the high

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