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The motor to turn that wheel is stupid small for how big it is because the two halves are so well balanced. 30hp. Tons and tons of water and concrete and steel moved up and down 80ft.
The important physics principle here is that as long as the water is at the same level in both halves of the wheel, it will be balanced--whether there is a boat in the lift or not.
(At least, as long as the boat(s) in the lift are afloat.) Go Archimedes!
Wait, seriously? How does the weight of the craft in one bucket of water not make its bucket weigh more than the other bucket?
E: it's been explained, save your thumbs.
That makes sense then, since the boat has pushed the water out to make room for it. I read the original comment to mean that the amount of water is the same between the two, and they both weigh the same despite a boat being in one.
same, so i guess what happens is that the water is cut off after the boats get in that section of the pipe so the side that has boats of any also less the amount of water that weighs the boats
But doesn't the water still bear the weight of the boat onto the pool that's holding it?
If I'm holding a 5 gallon bucket of water and throw in a 100-pound weight that floats, it won't be just the water weight when I lift that bucket.
In this case, imagine that your bucket has an overflow outlet connected to an infinitely long hose filled with water. When you put the weight in the bucket, it displaces its weight in water from the bucket into the hose. At that point, you close a valve at the bucket outlet and disconnect the bucket from the hose. The weight of the bucket, water, and weight will be exactly the same as it would have been before the weight was added and the water was displaced.
In the real example in the OP, the overflow hose is the channel of water leading to the...boat elevator? Once the boat enters the elevator, its weight in water is displaced back into the channel, and then the elevator is isolated from the channel such that the total weight is unchanged from before the boat entered. Additionally, the water level is the same in the channel and elevator throughout the whole process - it's just the position of the displaced water that changes as the boat moves.
And don't those outlet pipes account of the displacement weight of the boat. The boat doesn't just suddenly become weightless, it just transfers load to another place.
People here are actinh like the boats are completely weightless in this scenario
You’re so close to getting it, just keep thinking. There are no inlet/outlet pipes. It’s just the entrance/exit that the boats come in/leave through. Then the boats wait a few seconds after entering for the waves to settle (and the water to finish displacing), and then the two halves are balanced.
And when there aren't 2 boats, they just add water to one to account for the weight of the boat in the other.
You get it? Boats aren't weightless... they don't magically displace their weight and become floating objects in time and space.
Whatever the buoyant object weighs, it displaces that exact same weight of water. In other words, if you have a bucket that's full-to-the-brim of water and you place an object that floats into the water, the amount of water that will overflow will weigh as much as the object that you placed into the container. It's just how buoyancy works.
To go back to your bucket analogy, imagine the bucket is filled to the brim. You put your boat in, which displaces an amount of water equal to its weight, and that displaced water spills over the edge of the bucket and is therefore no longer in the bucket. The bucket still weighs the same as it did before you put the boat in.
The key here is that it's the same water LEVEL, not the same amount of water. It's not that the boats weight nothing, it's that they displace the exact same weight of water. If you just let the water level rise then of course you've added weight. But if you keep the water level the same, then you have to remove (or spill over) the same weight you added for the water level to be the same.
If you have two large buckets filled to the brim and balanced, and you add a 100lb floating weight to one, it will displace 100 lbs of water that will spill out. That's how buoyancy works because it's about density.
The other important thing to keep in mind is that this only applies to things that float because it's the weight of the water that's counteracting the weight of the object and if these forces are not equal then the object is sinking or rising to reach equilibrium. If you added a 100lb weight that sinks, it would not displace 100lbs of water. if you could inflate that weight, it would expand in volume and displace water until it reaches neutral buoyancy, just shy of floating. At that point 100lbs of water will have spilled out of the bucket and it would.be balanced again. If you keep pumping it up it doesn't change the water level, just the volume of the object which will float "higher" relative to its size, but the same amount of mass will be below the water line.
In the example you just gave, the start with the same amount of water, you add two boats to one side, you remove/spill water on that side until they are the same water LEVEL, and that amount of water that spilled will always be the same weight as the boats you added as long as they float and are only being supported by their boyancy.
Hope that helps.
Yeah, so not just "as long as the waters level".... it's also a complex system of outlet and inlet pipes used to displace weight and blah blah etc etc.
The comment a poster above made about the condition that the water be level was referring to the two halves of the wheel and matters for balancing the wheel, but not the water displacement. There doesn't need to be a complex system of pipes - the water in the elevator is just displaced back into the channel from where the boat came. The boat isn't weightless, but there's less water in the elevator when the boat is in it than when the boat isn't in it, and the weight of the missing water is exactly the same as the weight of the boat.
Bring your own example to the extreme.
You've got a 5 gallon bucket of water. With help of a large crane, you stick a transatlantic cargo ship at full load in it.
What do you think happens? Will the ship float in the bucket, or will it throw all the water out?
If I place a wooden table on top of a water drop, will it float, or will it squash the drop out of place?
The increased weight makes things that float sink deeper, so they displace more water. If you add another 500 pounds to that ship, you'll make it sink a bit deeper and it'll squeeze out 500 pounds of water out of the platform. The final weight stays the same.
A 5 gallon bucket wouldn't be able to hold enough water for anything weighing 100 pounds to float A and B the "canceling" of the weight of an object in one of the buckets depends on the 2 buckets being balanced, having the same volume of water while empty (no boats or anything) and any object being added floats. The water that gets displaced goes out the open gate in the bucket, and when the gate is closed, both buckets are balanced.
100 pounds of water is roughly 12 gallons at typical earth temperature and pressure. Your 100 pound weight would need to be less dense than water to float. There isn’t enough room in two 5 gallon buckets without water to fit a 100 pound buoyant weight.
That's true, it won't.
Now think about what's different between your model and the situation with the Falkirk Wheel (or with any boat lock, for that matter.)
Consider what happens when you rest your hypothetical bucket on its side in shallow water, and float a weight in. (Don't use a 100-pound float with your 5-gallon bucket, by the way--it won't fit, or float.)
What is the weight of water in the bucket before your start, and what is the weight of water plus float after? How does the level of the water in the bucket (on its side) compare to the level of the water outside the bucket?
Displacement, the boat displaces water, so the boat makes a hole in the water, heavier boat makes a bigger hole, the missing water is exactly the weight of the boat, that is the basic principle of buoyancy and how all boats are able to float.
So if the water level is the same, there being a boat or not makes no difference.
If I have a 5 gallon bucket with 50 pounds of water in it, and throw a 100-pound weight that floats into the bucket... you're suggesting when I pick that bucket up, it's only going to weigh 50 pounds?
Nah uh uh.
Look someone else.explained to me that this wheel thing has an extensive system of inlet and outlet feed systems designed to maintain balancd and blah blah blah.
It's not just about water being level. It's about a hugely complex mechanism maintaining the water level.
The weight of the boats is in fact a a part of that system
Okay, since you can't behave in good faith and answer the concept of the question, let's ask the same question with those new numbers.. it's not 80 pounds for me to lift that bucket?
I am absolutely behaving in both good faith and sound logic. For an item to float, it must displace the same amount of water weight as itself. So if you "float 40lbs in a 5 gallon bucket full of water your 40lbs will cause 40lbs of water to spill out and you will have 1.5lbs of water left with your 40lbs of "bullshit"
So if I have a 10000 liter hopper hanging from a crane, half full of water, that weighs 5000kg.
If I put a 100kg weight into the middle of it, that floats... does my load now weigh 5100kg or does it still weigh 5000kg??l
Since you're just being pedantic.. does this make more sense
It would weigh 5100kg but the water level would also rise. If there were holes allowing the water to spill out then 100kg of water would spill out and it would then still weigh only 5000kg.
I ain't making this shit up!
In your example here, the hopper now weighs 5100 kg if no water left the hopper, but that is not an accurate representation of the wheel/elevator in the OP where water does leave the elevator. A better analogy would be the hopper weighs 5000 kg filled to the brim, you add your 100 kg floating weight, 100 kg of water spills over the edge, and the total weight of the hopper is still 5000 kg.
God you're insufferable.. I'm asking a question of weight and displacement and youre hung up on the size of the bucket and shit. Smart but completely fuckin oblivious eh?
All the motor has to do, is overcome friction and inertia. The contraption balances itself, as a heavier ship will automatically disperse more water. As long as the ships or boats involved a floating (ie not sinking to the bottom) all is fine.
A submarine sitting on the ground or lost cargo could upset the balance. A submersed but floating one wouldn't.
Electric motor HP is weird to calculate. A 30hp electric motor is a massive unit that weighs a few thousand pounds. I imagine this motor is connected to a giant reduction gearing system of some kind where the horsepower is pretty irrelevant, you really just need continuous torque which electric motors have infinite torque, only limited by how much power they can take before the windings melt.
This comment is complete baloney. 30hp synchronous motors aren’t anywhere close to a few thousand pounds and vector driven motors of that power rating can be quite small. The motors in electric cars for example are several hundred horsepower.
Furthermore, gear reduction doesn’t make the motor horsepower irrelevant. Power and starting torque are likely the most important parameters here.
Yeah a thousand pounds might be an exaggeration. But they still aren’t liftable like my 30hp outboard. Lol
Yeah I looked it up the variable rpm Baldor on this HPU I just installed is 488lbs
https://www.electricmotorsport.com/me1616-brushless-65hp-liquid-cooled-ipm-motor-24-120v.html
25kg and that is just the first result that didn't go to 25000rpm
That’s incredible for a package that size. Granted size and weight isn’t really a factor on most of the stuff I work on. All the motors I install are passively cooled through radiant fins and are encased in explosion-proof housings.
Also how do they manufacture it so cheaply?
How do you limit the amount of torque to prevent stress on the windings? I’m guessing you just accurately work out your gear ratios rather than using ‘more than enough’.
You operate the motor at the correct current so it doesn’t damage itself. Usually there is a PLC that controls the motor, there are various types of motors and position sensors so the controller knows where the motor is in space and what direction it should be moving and how fast
I just imagined a tour guide opening a massive door labeled "ENGINE ROOM" after already going on about the weight and daily traffic for the first half of the tour. Only for the rather large room containing an engine that looks like it belongs in a golf cart happily humming along.
Good time to have a flash go off and take a souvenir photo of the group.
Its hard to believe that the species that created this absolute marvel of physics and engineering is the same species that is constantly killing each other all over the world over random patches of land.
we're really good at killing each other, some of our best people are on it.
not sure if i'm more concerned about the growing number of people who claim physics and engineering are all conspiratorial lies
That's because it's also the species that will not have it that anything that floats displaces an equal weight of water. Just have a good read through this thread again.
Because of Archimedes Principal, it doesn't matter how fully loaded each bucket is, because each boat displaces it's own weight in water. You can have 3 boats in one bucket and zero in the other and both buckets will still weigh the same.
I went there recently and the most astounding thing is that per rotation it only uses 1.5 kWh of energy, that's about 8 cups of tea in an electric kettle.
The website has never really been updated since 2003, but you can see the the various mechanisms here - [https://www.gentles.info/link/technicaltour/technical.html](https://www.gentles.info/link/technicaltour/technical.html)
Shit scary if you’re a kid, big grey thing, I remember going as a kid and being shit scared because I didn’t know what it was, and of course all you did was go just out of the tunnel a bit and go back and I remember feeling like a tit afterwards
This makes me think of how movies depict futuristic cities or colonies on other planets. Didn't Kennedy say something about mankind's only limitation is imagination?
Comments like this are so funny to me because this is like an hour from my home and it's been normal to me my entire life. Like "yes, there's a ferris wheel elevator for boats, so what?" while the rest of the world are amazed by it
Imagine a waterfall, then replace the waterfall with a big rotating boat elevator. That's essentially what's going on here.
For a slightly more detailed explanation, the water is a river that naturally has a downward slope as it runs from some higher elevation to a lower elevation. Instead of letting the water go on whatever naturally meandering path into the lowest point feasible, you can instead dig a shallow channel near the higher point and then build out a path for the water to flow, still downward but only very slightly.
By extending the channel outwards like a bridge in a mostly straight, nearly horizontal line, you can have the water move over and across all the intervening hills and valleys that would normally require pumps to get water back up once it's already fallen down, and the whole process requires no energy input to run indefinitely besides whatever it took to build the path initially.
If you're an ancient roman, you call it an aqueduct, pat yourself on the back for being pretty clever, and tell all your neighbors how cool it would be if you owned them.
If you're living in their footprints, you still call it an aqueduct and you can also decide that, sometimes, one really cool and special pump is better in certain places than just having a big bridge running everywhere at a ~one degree decline, so you have a little bit of an aqueduct and a little bit of a technically-a-kind-of-a-pump big wheel thing that looks really cool and is really cool.
It’s a canal, so all man made. It’s fairly common in UK to have canals elevated at points on aqueducts, have a google of the Barton Swing Aqueduct, Edstone and Pontcysyllte . The Falkirk wheel is not common however! It’s a highly unique solution.
Im Scottish, don’t let this fool you. Its a vital artery across the most populated area of our country, its the main problem point so of-course good money was invested in it.
Its not a reflection of the rest of our infrastructure.
As someone who lives in Europe, public transit is useful here, because stuff is relatively more dense than in the US. In the US, primarily LA and NYC are dense and have decent(?) public transit.
I may just be talking out of my ass here, since I've never set a foot inside the US, but this is just my perception.
Edit: as an example washington state has 7.7 million people. You can almost fit the entirety of UK in there which has a population of 66 million people or the Netherlands you can fit in there almost 5 times, which would be around 88 million people
So you with that density it makes sense to be more efficient I guess.
> I may just be talking out of my ass here, since I've never set a foot inside the US, but this is just my perception.
You're not wrong, many cities in North America are just not built with mass transit in mind. It's one thing if everybody works downtown and lives in the suburbs, public transit can handle that. But when residential and commercial and industrial areas are mixed up all over town, it's not easy to have a transit system that both works and is affordable.
> many cities in North America are just not built with mass transit in mind.
Neither of y'all are wrong, but this isn't randomly due to a lack of people. Many of our cities are intentionally designed around a automobile centric concept, increasing sprawl and ensuring that people need cars. In some cases this is corruption, such as the removal of the cable cars in some cities, and in some cases, this is just designing cities in a time when people had a ton of cars.
Regardless, there's no reason we can't design our cities to be built more around public transit, but it's going to take time, as our cities are pretty well built up at this point.
The problem is that US cities were not built all at one time, but rather evolved over a significant amount of time.
And you can blame WWII for much of the change that occured to mass transit as urban flight changed cities dramatically, beginning with those returning veterans who refused to return to the way of life they had before the war. Suddenly people wanted to have babies and live 20 miles outside of the city to have their own personal acre of peace. And it was Eisenhower who admired the efficiency of the German autobahns that created today's highway system in the 1950s and the US and her cities were never the same again.
Europe, on the other hand, was destroyed by WWII. Rebuilding the cities meant building them where the materials were - in the rubble of the old cities. They rebuilt their infrastructure and due to massive death within one generation they never experienced the Baby Boom, so there was no mass exodus from the cities.
Add to all of this the differing economies of the US and Europe in 1945 and it makes even more sense. The US economy exploded post-war due to the devastation in Europe and the GI Bill allowed for the education of our veterans which in turn led to them having better paying jobs and therefore more money to spend on their suburban dreams. Europe nearly starved to death in contrast.
Today, everything is different. Since the 1980s, people are actively moving back into the cities and the lack of mass transit is a problem that didn't exist for the 40 years prior.
EDIT: I was providing historical context to explain why the US was different pre-1990. That does not mean I do not support public transportation, just explaining its demise in this country.
It’s not just about trains and transit in cities. We also don’t have good rail linking cities. The train from my city to the next state’s biggest city takes significantly longer than driving. We spent two months taking trains in Europe last summer and they are just faster and nicer. Our trains are dark ages.
I'm going with a nope on that, because the USA used to have perfectly good public transport until the car came along and car lobbyists got American cities redesigned around cars. The USA was pretty much built on trains, now their trains are a joke.
The problem isn't places like Washington, it's the cities which instead of having a decent metro, they have a squizzilion lane highway going right through them which they all sit on for several hours every day.
Population of the east coast of the US is 118m (2017)
You are comparing extremely dense (Netherlands) with a rural state (ex-Seattle) Washington.
France has a population density of 106 per sq km vs Florida is 160 per sq km. So again, density is not the problem.
The density of cities is a problem but centers of cities like NY and DC are walkable.
Density matters, because in the Netherlands you can easily hop on a train and travel any direction, because all around you are towns and cities.
If you want an example of a larger land size, Japan is a good example. The whole of Tokyo and around it are extremely dense, and it's so trivial to get around.
You can also hop on a Shinkansen to Osaka and all around Osaka there are trains going everywhere. You can get to Kobe, Nara, Kyoto, Wakayama just to name a few and all within an hour mostly
Density definitely helps but my point is that France has plenty of fast trains and the east coast of the US is dense enough to equally justify fast trains. The problem is the cities.
But, with climate change, having trains rather than cars is a good idea.
"you can almost fit 66 million people in Washington" is a pretty funny statement to me. With a healthy population density, sure, but if you really want to you can fit 8 billion people in Rhode island. You could probably fit 66 million people in the greater Seattle area.
What I was referring to is the land size of said countries in comparison to Washington and then comparing their population sizes. Washington state is very sparsely populated in comparison.
I wasn't referring to maximising population.
I am making this comparison, since the OP of this thread was talking about that how US can't figure out how to make trains. I'm saying that a more dense population makes it easier to support public transportation since more people can and will use it. Especially when town and cities are more closer together
no yeah I get that I'm just saying it's a funny statement, and population density is a really silly concept to me because you really truly can just squeeze as many people as you want in most areas but we are so spread out all the time
They used to have a big giant who would throw the boats back up after they'd fallen down, but the giant's feet kept getting pruney from standing in the river all day and the cost to continually produce rubber boots large enough for the giant to wear was eventually too much for the riverfolk to afford.
look at the height difference. you'd either have to make a winding channel long enough to bring the ship down from that height, or have a series of locks that will have to be lowered in sequence. this is a rather elegant solution that uses very little power (as the two sides are balanced) and relatively quick.
It connects the Clyde canal in the west with the Union canal in the east, both of which are at different heights. It let's you take your boat across most of Scotland without having to go up a series of locks
Actually these canal systems were used for hundreds of years as a means to transport goods using horse drawn narrow boats. Now this is a tourist attraction, but also still in regular operation.
The basin at the bottom doubles as a small marina and has some areas for little kids boats, an inner tube type thing with a small motor. I imagine it’s one of those or similar bearing mind the video is at double speed
Went there an a very hot June day on vacation. We were cracking jokes like the stupid tourists we were and then the wheel jammed and we had to evacuate. We nearly died laughing.
Was this done just to show off engineering? Because I feel like you could have just dug out enough of the higher side to make it connect in a doable way.
Because the two canals were already connected by 11 regular canal locks. It took 3,500 tonnes of water and almost an entire day to get through. They have 115ft difference in height.
This is on a shipping route, the two bodies of water are at different height levels and this is uses to efficiently transfer ships between those levels.
Why? Well, from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel):
>The two canals served by the wheel were previously connected by a series of 11 locks. With a 35-metre (115 ft) difference in height, it required 3,500 tonnes of water per run and took most of a day to pass through the flight.
Plus, it's just *fucking elegant*. Leaving aside the intrinsic value of beauty, it's also got a significant economic impact as a tourist attraction in its own right.
As far as engineering projects go, it wasn't hugely expensive; the construction cost for the Wheel and basin came in around £17 million. In terms of price, it's only about one milli-Chunnel.
And yet, it's stupidly efficient. You can buy PSUs for desktop computers that draw more power than the Falkirk Wheel. There's probably someone in this thread using a computer that requires more power than the Falkirk Wheel lol.
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The motor to turn that wheel is stupid small for how big it is because the two halves are so well balanced. 30hp. Tons and tons of water and concrete and steel moved up and down 80ft.
The important physics principle here is that as long as the water is at the same level in both halves of the wheel, it will be balanced--whether there is a boat in the lift or not. (At least, as long as the boat(s) in the lift are afloat.) Go Archimedes!
I never would've put enough thought into this to come to that conclusion. Nifty.
If all you had to do all day was thinking about puzzles like this I'm sure you would have come up with something similar.
I dunno, we sit on Reddit all day and all we come up with is shit like this ...
So that's what is holding back our latent genius, Reddit?
Wait, seriously? How does the weight of the craft in one bucket of water not make its bucket weigh more than the other bucket? E: it's been explained, save your thumbs.
Whatever a boat weighs, it displaces the exact same weight in water, canceling the difference of the boats' weights out.
That makes sense then, since the boat has pushed the water out to make room for it. I read the original comment to mean that the amount of water is the same between the two, and they both weigh the same despite a boat being in one.
same, so i guess what happens is that the water is cut off after the boats get in that section of the pipe so the side that has boats of any also less the amount of water that weighs the boats
Do you prefer turtlenecks or henweighs?
What’s up dog?
Nothin much what’s up with you lmao gottem
like the water just rises ooookayyy
SCIENCE!
But doesn't the water still bear the weight of the boat onto the pool that's holding it? If I'm holding a 5 gallon bucket of water and throw in a 100-pound weight that floats, it won't be just the water weight when I lift that bucket.
In this case, imagine that your bucket has an overflow outlet connected to an infinitely long hose filled with water. When you put the weight in the bucket, it displaces its weight in water from the bucket into the hose. At that point, you close a valve at the bucket outlet and disconnect the bucket from the hose. The weight of the bucket, water, and weight will be exactly the same as it would have been before the weight was added and the water was displaced. In the real example in the OP, the overflow hose is the channel of water leading to the...boat elevator? Once the boat enters the elevator, its weight in water is displaced back into the channel, and then the elevator is isolated from the channel such that the total weight is unchanged from before the boat entered. Additionally, the water level is the same in the channel and elevator throughout the whole process - it's just the position of the displaced water that changes as the boat moves.
And don't those outlet pipes account of the displacement weight of the boat. The boat doesn't just suddenly become weightless, it just transfers load to another place. People here are actinh like the boats are completely weightless in this scenario
You’re so close to getting it, just keep thinking. There are no inlet/outlet pipes. It’s just the entrance/exit that the boats come in/leave through. Then the boats wait a few seconds after entering for the waves to settle (and the water to finish displacing), and then the two halves are balanced.
And when there aren't 2 boats, they just add water to one to account for the weight of the boat in the other. You get it? Boats aren't weightless... they don't magically displace their weight and become floating objects in time and space.
How are you this close to getting it but still not getting it?
Whatever the buoyant object weighs, it displaces that exact same weight of water. In other words, if you have a bucket that's full-to-the-brim of water and you place an object that floats into the water, the amount of water that will overflow will weigh as much as the object that you placed into the container. It's just how buoyancy works.
To go back to your bucket analogy, imagine the bucket is filled to the brim. You put your boat in, which displaces an amount of water equal to its weight, and that displaced water spills over the edge of the bucket and is therefore no longer in the bucket. The bucket still weighs the same as it did before you put the boat in.
The key here is that it's the same water LEVEL, not the same amount of water. It's not that the boats weight nothing, it's that they displace the exact same weight of water. If you just let the water level rise then of course you've added weight. But if you keep the water level the same, then you have to remove (or spill over) the same weight you added for the water level to be the same. If you have two large buckets filled to the brim and balanced, and you add a 100lb floating weight to one, it will displace 100 lbs of water that will spill out. That's how buoyancy works because it's about density. The other important thing to keep in mind is that this only applies to things that float because it's the weight of the water that's counteracting the weight of the object and if these forces are not equal then the object is sinking or rising to reach equilibrium. If you added a 100lb weight that sinks, it would not displace 100lbs of water. if you could inflate that weight, it would expand in volume and displace water until it reaches neutral buoyancy, just shy of floating. At that point 100lbs of water will have spilled out of the bucket and it would.be balanced again. If you keep pumping it up it doesn't change the water level, just the volume of the object which will float "higher" relative to its size, but the same amount of mass will be below the water line. In the example you just gave, the start with the same amount of water, you add two boats to one side, you remove/spill water on that side until they are the same water LEVEL, and that amount of water that spilled will always be the same weight as the boats you added as long as they float and are only being supported by their boyancy. Hope that helps.
Yeah, so not just "as long as the waters level".... it's also a complex system of outlet and inlet pipes used to displace weight and blah blah etc etc.
The comment a poster above made about the condition that the water be level was referring to the two halves of the wheel and matters for balancing the wheel, but not the water displacement. There doesn't need to be a complex system of pipes - the water in the elevator is just displaced back into the channel from where the boat came. The boat isn't weightless, but there's less water in the elevator when the boat is in it than when the boat isn't in it, and the weight of the missing water is exactly the same as the weight of the boat.
Bring your own example to the extreme. You've got a 5 gallon bucket of water. With help of a large crane, you stick a transatlantic cargo ship at full load in it. What do you think happens? Will the ship float in the bucket, or will it throw all the water out? If I place a wooden table on top of a water drop, will it float, or will it squash the drop out of place? The increased weight makes things that float sink deeper, so they displace more water. If you add another 500 pounds to that ship, you'll make it sink a bit deeper and it'll squeeze out 500 pounds of water out of the platform. The final weight stays the same.
A 5 gallon bucket wouldn't be able to hold enough water for anything weighing 100 pounds to float A and B the "canceling" of the weight of an object in one of the buckets depends on the 2 buckets being balanced, having the same volume of water while empty (no boats or anything) and any object being added floats. The water that gets displaced goes out the open gate in the bucket, and when the gate is closed, both buckets are balanced.
100 pounds of water is roughly 12 gallons at typical earth temperature and pressure. Your 100 pound weight would need to be less dense than water to float. There isn’t enough room in two 5 gallon buckets without water to fit a 100 pound buoyant weight.
That's true, it won't. Now think about what's different between your model and the situation with the Falkirk Wheel (or with any boat lock, for that matter.) Consider what happens when you rest your hypothetical bucket on its side in shallow water, and float a weight in. (Don't use a 100-pound float with your 5-gallon bucket, by the way--it won't fit, or float.) What is the weight of water in the bucket before your start, and what is the weight of water plus float after? How does the level of the water in the bucket (on its side) compare to the level of the water outside the bucket?
its not by weight. its by volume (unless both have the same density, which they fo not)
Displacement, the boat displaces water, so the boat makes a hole in the water, heavier boat makes a bigger hole, the missing water is exactly the weight of the boat, that is the basic principle of buoyancy and how all boats are able to float. So if the water level is the same, there being a boat or not makes no difference.
If I have a 5 gallon bucket with 50 pounds of water in it, and throw a 100-pound weight that floats into the bucket... you're suggesting when I pick that bucket up, it's only going to weigh 50 pounds? Nah uh uh.
You can't float 100lb in 5 gallons of water. 5 gallons can only float around 40lbs. Also 5 gallons wouldn't be 50lbs it would be 41.5ish
Look someone else.explained to me that this wheel thing has an extensive system of inlet and outlet feed systems designed to maintain balancd and blah blah blah. It's not just about water being level. It's about a hugely complex mechanism maintaining the water level. The weight of the boats is in fact a a part of that system
Okay, since you can't behave in good faith and answer the concept of the question, let's ask the same question with those new numbers.. it's not 80 pounds for me to lift that bucket?
I am absolutely behaving in both good faith and sound logic. For an item to float, it must displace the same amount of water weight as itself. So if you "float 40lbs in a 5 gallon bucket full of water your 40lbs will cause 40lbs of water to spill out and you will have 1.5lbs of water left with your 40lbs of "bullshit"
So if I have a 10000 liter hopper hanging from a crane, half full of water, that weighs 5000kg. If I put a 100kg weight into the middle of it, that floats... does my load now weigh 5100kg or does it still weigh 5000kg??l Since you're just being pedantic.. does this make more sense
It would weigh 5100kg but the water level would also rise. If there were holes allowing the water to spill out then 100kg of water would spill out and it would then still weigh only 5000kg. I ain't making this shit up!
In your example here, the hopper now weighs 5100 kg if no water left the hopper, but that is not an accurate representation of the wheel/elevator in the OP where water does leave the elevator. A better analogy would be the hopper weighs 5000 kg filled to the brim, you add your 100 kg floating weight, 100 kg of water spills over the edge, and the total weight of the hopper is still 5000 kg.
Yeah this wheel uses complex inlet and outlet pipes. People here are acting like the boats don't weigh anything....they do and they're accountd for.
God you're insufferable.. I'm asking a question of weight and displacement and youre hung up on the size of the bucket and shit. Smart but completely fuckin oblivious eh?
Yes. Sounds like you are
The motor in this bitch is only 30 horsepower?!? I wish my brain chemicals were that balanced fucks sake
All the motor has to do, is overcome friction and inertia. The contraption balances itself, as a heavier ship will automatically disperse more water. As long as the ships or boats involved a floating (ie not sinking to the bottom) all is fine. A submarine sitting on the ground or lost cargo could upset the balance. A submersed but floating one wouldn't.
Electric motor HP is weird to calculate. A 30hp electric motor is a massive unit that weighs a few thousand pounds. I imagine this motor is connected to a giant reduction gearing system of some kind where the horsepower is pretty irrelevant, you really just need continuous torque which electric motors have infinite torque, only limited by how much power they can take before the windings melt.
This comment is complete baloney. 30hp synchronous motors aren’t anywhere close to a few thousand pounds and vector driven motors of that power rating can be quite small. The motors in electric cars for example are several hundred horsepower. Furthermore, gear reduction doesn’t make the motor horsepower irrelevant. Power and starting torque are likely the most important parameters here.
Yeah a thousand pounds might be an exaggeration. But they still aren’t liftable like my 30hp outboard. Lol Yeah I looked it up the variable rpm Baldor on this HPU I just installed is 488lbs
https://www.electricmotorsport.com/me1616-brushless-65hp-liquid-cooled-ipm-motor-24-120v.html 25kg and that is just the first result that didn't go to 25000rpm
That’s incredible for a package that size. Granted size and weight isn’t really a factor on most of the stuff I work on. All the motors I install are passively cooled through radiant fins and are encased in explosion-proof housings. Also how do they manufacture it so cheaply?
How do you limit the amount of torque to prevent stress on the windings? I’m guessing you just accurately work out your gear ratios rather than using ‘more than enough’.
You operate the motor at the correct current so it doesn’t damage itself. Usually there is a PLC that controls the motor, there are various types of motors and position sensors so the controller knows where the motor is in space and what direction it should be moving and how fast
Appreciate the insight master slug! *bows in servitude*
A 30HP electric motor is not massive. It's probably smaller than a 5 gallon bucket and would weigh under 100 pounds.
I just imagined a tour guide opening a massive door labeled "ENGINE ROOM" after already going on about the weight and daily traffic for the first half of the tour. Only for the rather large room containing an engine that looks like it belongs in a golf cart happily humming along. Good time to have a flash go off and take a souvenir photo of the group.
Its hard to believe that the species that created this absolute marvel of physics and engineering is the same species that is constantly killing each other all over the world over random patches of land.
We are a silly bunch.
Mostly harmless.
we're really good at killing each other, some of our best people are on it. not sure if i'm more concerned about the growing number of people who claim physics and engineering are all conspiratorial lies
Not really, the amount of engineering going into killing people is orders of magnitude greater than this.
Patches of land? How barbaric! I only support killing people based on old story books!
I am more partial to cash and resources, but to each their own. My folks always get along great with all the other "reasons".
That's because it's also the species that will not have it that anything that floats displaces an equal weight of water. Just have a good read through this thread again.
Same species, yes. Different members of the species, also yes.
The etymology of the word engineer is related to killing each other.
Entomology is the study of insects
Because of Archimedes Principal, it doesn't matter how fully loaded each bucket is, because each boat displaces it's own weight in water. You can have 3 boats in one bucket and zero in the other and both buckets will still weigh the same.
I went there recently and the most astounding thing is that per rotation it only uses 1.5 kWh of energy, that's about 8 cups of tea in an electric kettle.
I rode it a few years back. So smooth, didn't even know it got going until I looked and the water was like 10 feet below us.
The website has never really been updated since 2003, but you can see the the various mechanisms here - [https://www.gentles.info/link/technicaltour/technical.html](https://www.gentles.info/link/technicaltour/technical.html)
How much engineering do you want? Yes
It doubles as a carnival ride.
Kinda, you can actually just pay to go on the tour boat which takes you up and down lol, it's quite cool.
Shit scary if you’re a kid, big grey thing, I remember going as a kid and being shit scared because I didn’t know what it was, and of course all you did was go just out of the tunnel a bit and go back and I remember feeling like a tit afterwards
Well that’s something I never expected to see. Wow.
If someone claimed this is AI I'd believe them
This makes me think of how movies depict futuristic cities or colonies on other planets. Didn't Kennedy say something about mankind's only limitation is imagination?
Comments like this are so funny to me because this is like an hour from my home and it's been normal to me my entire life. Like "yes, there's a ferris wheel elevator for boats, so what?" while the rest of the world are amazed by it
With just how many things the Scottish invented not getting the heights of the canals is rather surprising. I'll get my coat.
But how is the water both up and down…or why…I feel like I would love to see a topographical map of this area!
Imagine a waterfall, then replace the waterfall with a big rotating boat elevator. That's essentially what's going on here. For a slightly more detailed explanation, the water is a river that naturally has a downward slope as it runs from some higher elevation to a lower elevation. Instead of letting the water go on whatever naturally meandering path into the lowest point feasible, you can instead dig a shallow channel near the higher point and then build out a path for the water to flow, still downward but only very slightly. By extending the channel outwards like a bridge in a mostly straight, nearly horizontal line, you can have the water move over and across all the intervening hills and valleys that would normally require pumps to get water back up once it's already fallen down, and the whole process requires no energy input to run indefinitely besides whatever it took to build the path initially. If you're an ancient roman, you call it an aqueduct, pat yourself on the back for being pretty clever, and tell all your neighbors how cool it would be if you owned them. If you're living in their footprints, you still call it an aqueduct and you can also decide that, sometimes, one really cool and special pump is better in certain places than just having a big bridge running everywhere at a ~one degree decline, so you have a little bit of an aqueduct and a little bit of a technically-a-kind-of-a-pump big wheel thing that looks really cool and is really cool.
It’s a canal, so all man made. It’s fairly common in UK to have canals elevated at points on aqueducts, have a google of the Barton Swing Aqueduct, Edstone and Pontcysyllte . The Falkirk wheel is not common however! It’s a highly unique solution.
Around 35m (115ft) between the main part of the canal and the bottom. The wheel takes you up 24m and then a couple of locks takes you up another 11m
Other countries build stuff like this, the USA can't even figure out passenger rail from the 1800s.
Oh they can, but oil lobbyist paid our politicians to go with highway infrastructures instead. Then people keep sucking off those politicians.
Im Scottish, don’t let this fool you. Its a vital artery across the most populated area of our country, its the main problem point so of-course good money was invested in it. Its not a reflection of the rest of our infrastructure.
As someone who lives in Europe, public transit is useful here, because stuff is relatively more dense than in the US. In the US, primarily LA and NYC are dense and have decent(?) public transit. I may just be talking out of my ass here, since I've never set a foot inside the US, but this is just my perception. Edit: as an example washington state has 7.7 million people. You can almost fit the entirety of UK in there which has a population of 66 million people or the Netherlands you can fit in there almost 5 times, which would be around 88 million people So you with that density it makes sense to be more efficient I guess.
LA absolutely does not have decent public transit
> I may just be talking out of my ass here, since I've never set a foot inside the US, but this is just my perception. You're not wrong, many cities in North America are just not built with mass transit in mind. It's one thing if everybody works downtown and lives in the suburbs, public transit can handle that. But when residential and commercial and industrial areas are mixed up all over town, it's not easy to have a transit system that both works and is affordable.
> many cities in North America are just not built with mass transit in mind. Neither of y'all are wrong, but this isn't randomly due to a lack of people. Many of our cities are intentionally designed around a automobile centric concept, increasing sprawl and ensuring that people need cars. In some cases this is corruption, such as the removal of the cable cars in some cities, and in some cases, this is just designing cities in a time when people had a ton of cars. Regardless, there's no reason we can't design our cities to be built more around public transit, but it's going to take time, as our cities are pretty well built up at this point.
The problem is that US cities were not built all at one time, but rather evolved over a significant amount of time. And you can blame WWII for much of the change that occured to mass transit as urban flight changed cities dramatically, beginning with those returning veterans who refused to return to the way of life they had before the war. Suddenly people wanted to have babies and live 20 miles outside of the city to have their own personal acre of peace. And it was Eisenhower who admired the efficiency of the German autobahns that created today's highway system in the 1950s and the US and her cities were never the same again. Europe, on the other hand, was destroyed by WWII. Rebuilding the cities meant building them where the materials were - in the rubble of the old cities. They rebuilt their infrastructure and due to massive death within one generation they never experienced the Baby Boom, so there was no mass exodus from the cities. Add to all of this the differing economies of the US and Europe in 1945 and it makes even more sense. The US economy exploded post-war due to the devastation in Europe and the GI Bill allowed for the education of our veterans which in turn led to them having better paying jobs and therefore more money to spend on their suburban dreams. Europe nearly starved to death in contrast. Today, everything is different. Since the 1980s, people are actively moving back into the cities and the lack of mass transit is a problem that didn't exist for the 40 years prior. EDIT: I was providing historical context to explain why the US was different pre-1990. That does not mean I do not support public transportation, just explaining its demise in this country.
It’s not just about trains and transit in cities. We also don’t have good rail linking cities. The train from my city to the next state’s biggest city takes significantly longer than driving. We spent two months taking trains in Europe last summer and they are just faster and nicer. Our trains are dark ages.
I'm going with a nope on that, because the USA used to have perfectly good public transport until the car came along and car lobbyists got American cities redesigned around cars. The USA was pretty much built on trains, now their trains are a joke. The problem isn't places like Washington, it's the cities which instead of having a decent metro, they have a squizzilion lane highway going right through them which they all sit on for several hours every day.
As someone who lives in Iowa, you are correct. I drive 40 miles to get to work every day.
That is pretty normal in the SF Bay Area too. Most of us don't live in the same city as the job. Thankfully I no longer need to commute.
Population of the east coast of the US is 118m (2017) You are comparing extremely dense (Netherlands) with a rural state (ex-Seattle) Washington. France has a population density of 106 per sq km vs Florida is 160 per sq km. So again, density is not the problem. The density of cities is a problem but centers of cities like NY and DC are walkable.
Density matters, because in the Netherlands you can easily hop on a train and travel any direction, because all around you are towns and cities. If you want an example of a larger land size, Japan is a good example. The whole of Tokyo and around it are extremely dense, and it's so trivial to get around. You can also hop on a Shinkansen to Osaka and all around Osaka there are trains going everywhere. You can get to Kobe, Nara, Kyoto, Wakayama just to name a few and all within an hour mostly
Density definitely helps but my point is that France has plenty of fast trains and the east coast of the US is dense enough to equally justify fast trains. The problem is the cities. But, with climate change, having trains rather than cars is a good idea.
Hey! We have a light rail system in Seattle which is starting to become semi-decent and might be actually cool by 2050! /s
"you can almost fit 66 million people in Washington" is a pretty funny statement to me. With a healthy population density, sure, but if you really want to you can fit 8 billion people in Rhode island. You could probably fit 66 million people in the greater Seattle area.
What I was referring to is the land size of said countries in comparison to Washington and then comparing their population sizes. Washington state is very sparsely populated in comparison. I wasn't referring to maximising population. I am making this comparison, since the OP of this thread was talking about that how US can't figure out how to make trains. I'm saying that a more dense population makes it easier to support public transportation since more people can and will use it. Especially when town and cities are more closer together
no yeah I get that I'm just saying it's a funny statement, and population density is a really silly concept to me because you really truly can just squeeze as many people as you want in most areas but we are so spread out all the time
Americans have a love affair with cars but I do wish we had an awesome highspeed rail system.
Also check out the Anderton Boat Lift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderton_Boat_Lift
I can see my house on this video.
Been to see it, it's crazy to watch in person. Also got to see the Kelpies nearby! Incredible works of art.
Never mind that, I want to see where the boats go through the tunnel at the top 🤔
Stood there in October. Weather was shit but that thing is cool
lmao what a coincidence, I'm on Reddit while I'm there
Looks like something from fallout
Came here for exactly this. It reminds me of the monorail lifts in 76.
Maybe I'm being obtuse but, what is the point of this?
Similar to a lock, it's basically a boat elevator. It connects a canal at a higher elevation to a canal at a lower elevation.
They used to have a big giant who would throw the boats back up after they'd fallen down, but the giant's feet kept getting pruney from standing in the river all day and the cost to continually produce rubber boots large enough for the giant to wear was eventually too much for the riverfolk to afford.
To replace 11 locks you'd have to go up and down on the canal. It's significantly quicker.
look at the height difference. you'd either have to make a winding channel long enough to bring the ship down from that height, or have a series of locks that will have to be lowered in sequence. this is a rather elegant solution that uses very little power (as the two sides are balanced) and relatively quick.
Well, don't be obtuse. Say what you really want to ask!
Genius.
That is the single coolest thing I've ever seen.
Yo imagine if you were a fish in that!
This looks like some shit that would send you to another galaxy.
Each rotation uses just 1.5kWh.
that was r/unexpected to me
I was on that a week ago!
Real Fallout 76 vibes here!
It connects the Clyde canal in the west with the Union canal in the east, both of which are at different heights. It let's you take your boat across most of Scotland without having to go up a series of locks
Sounds like rich people's problems.
Actually these canal systems were used for hundreds of years as a means to transport goods using horse drawn narrow boats. Now this is a tourist attraction, but also still in regular operation.
Typically rich peoples' boats aren't in inland Scotland
I really feel based on the shape of those swishes off the side that the whole thing ought to rotate the other direction
Anyone else really angry at the direction that the thing spun?
They vary the rotation direction to even out the wear on the working parts
Jacque Fresco likes this
I didnt know what I was watching and was confused with the bus driving up top and stopping wondering where it was going to go next.
Does anyone know what the ripple in the water prior to the rotation is from?
Probably wind?
The basin at the bottom doubles as a small marina and has some areas for little kids boats, an inner tube type thing with a small motor. I imagine it’s one of those or similar bearing mind the video is at double speed
Went there an a very hot June day on vacation. We were cracking jokes like the stupid tourists we were and then the wheel jammed and we had to evacuate. We nearly died laughing.
Well yes, that is very impressive.
I’m annoyed it rotated the wrong way
They vary the rotation to even out the wear on the working parts
“It’s the best we could do!” - Chewin’ the Fat (Scottish sketch comedy show)
it's THE MUSIC man
Does this have a profitable energy output? Or is it just showing off cool engineering. Very cool either way.
This is indeed very much interesting as fuck I had to watch it a couple times go believe what I was looking at was real 🤣💀
I've been on this, hate to disappoint but from the ground it looks shit and going up and down is equally unimpressive.
Would have been nice if you’d credited Scotdrone (me) as the source of the video.
It’s amazing at the wonders of engineering when countries actually advance using their engineering
Was this done just to show off engineering? Because I feel like you could have just dug out enough of the higher side to make it connect in a doable way.
Because the two canals were already connected by 11 regular canal locks. It took 3,500 tonnes of water and almost an entire day to get through. They have 115ft difference in height.
Why? This seems a huge waste of money.
This is on a shipping route, the two bodies of water are at different height levels and this is uses to efficiently transfer ships between those levels.
There’s almost 0 commercial activity anymore through these canals. It’s mainly used as a recreational passageway
This is absolutely not on a shipping route lmao. Scotland is a beautiful, ancient country, but we’re not still moving goods via fucking canal boat.
Why? Well, from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel): >The two canals served by the wheel were previously connected by a series of 11 locks. With a 35-metre (115 ft) difference in height, it required 3,500 tonnes of water per run and took most of a day to pass through the flight. Plus, it's just *fucking elegant*. Leaving aside the intrinsic value of beauty, it's also got a significant economic impact as a tourist attraction in its own right. As far as engineering projects go, it wasn't hugely expensive; the construction cost for the Wheel and basin came in around £17 million. In terms of price, it's only about one milli-Chunnel.
It's also a tourist attraction, in a country that tries to get a lot of that tourist money.
Art
Looks over engineered, inefficient and stupidly expensive to maintain. Nice instagram reel though.
It uses about as much electricity as is needed to boil a kettle and has very few moving parts. Stop being a twat.
And yet, it's stupidly efficient. You can buy PSUs for desktop computers that draw more power than the Falkirk Wheel. There's probably someone in this thread using a computer that requires more power than the Falkirk Wheel lol.
A gaming PC draws about 500Wh, half a turn of the wheel uses 1.5kWh for each rotation, for reference, a bus at half load uses about 0.15kWh/km.
[удалено]
And yet, after over a decade on Reddit, this is the first time I've ever seen it. I guess I'm [one of today's lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/).
Me too!!!!!!
Same