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History of Technology 1: Waterwheels 227 Views


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Description:

Waterwheels are crafty little thieves. Why? They stole a twenty out of our wallet once. Oh, and they also steal kinetic energy to do some useful things. Hit play to learn more.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

We speak student! water wheels are simple put a giant wheel in moving water and [a giant wheel in a lake]

00:08

the water makes the wheel turn boom end of video seriously what are you waiting

00:13

for roll that shmoop copyright screen alright fine it's a little more

00:16

complicated than that especially when we start analyzing energy flow water

00:21

flowing in a river has a whole bunch of kinetic energy thanks to gravity [a very small waterfall]

00:24

dragging the water downhill toward the nearest ocean from a human perspective

00:29

all that energy is being wasted but water wheels are crafty little thieves [a waterwheel disguised as a thief in the fields]

00:33

they steal some of that wasted kinetic energy and make it do useful stuff like

00:39

grind grain saw timber or pump bellows all right why not sit back and let the [woman sitting by a pool with her feet in the water]

00:44

water do all those things can't earn your keep their water because of their

00:48

simplicity waterwheels haven't changed much since ancient times the water

00:53

wheels that crushed grain into flour two thousand years ago had the same basic [a modern day electrical turbine]

00:57

setup as the ginormous turbines producing electricity in China today hey

01:02

if ain't broke you know why fix it however thanks to several centuries of

01:07

tinkering water wheels have a definitely evolved us in a few ways well the goal [a building man tinkering with an electrical turbine]

01:11

was always to make them more efficient the first water wheels were horizontal

01:15

think of a normal water wheel lopped over on its side alright well this [waterwheel on its side in a small puddle of water]

01:21

is a video here just look at it instead well the axle stuck straight up out of

01:25

the water and into the floor of the mill where it turned on millstone there were [

01:30

no gears gadgets or doo-dads that's a shame as we love a good doo-dad [flying toy carrying a man away]

01:35

right well if we're comparing water wheel to cars the horizontal

01:38

waterwheel was the equivalent of the Model T got the job done but boy it [an olden car bobbing up and down as it drives down the road]

01:42

wasn't perfect at some point someone had the bright idea of standing a wheel

01:46

straight up on its edge these vertical wheels were called undershots because

01:51

all the water flows under them brilliant right well undershots were more [waterwheel with a pink line showing the undershots]

01:56

efficient than horizontal water wheels but technically they still only transferred

02:00

about twenty-five percent of the rivers energy to the mill that means [lots of water gushing down the river]

02:03

75 percent of the rivers energy was just wasting away down the river rivers man

02:08

such a freeloader well the main problem with undershot wheels was that they got in

02:12

their own way the river pushed the paddles forward but they lost speed [a wooden waterwheel in a small puddle of water]

02:16

dragging through the water and even more efficient version of the water wheel was

02:20

the overshot which was positioned so the water would run off of an edge and dump

02:26

itself all over the wheels paddles over shots are twice as efficient as under [an overshot waterwheel]

02:31

shot but for hundreds of years nobody knew which model was better because

02:34

people didn't understand the science of energy or have any way to measure it so

02:38

now let's imagine we're medieval Europeans who want to grind some weed [medieval people laying on a beach]

02:41

but we live on the coast not near a river what do we do what do we do curse our

02:46

parents and their beachbum way no well maybe if we get one more message from

02:50

them saying Prithee bring my board wax hither dude irritating messages aside [medieval boy stood on a beach with a blue phone]

02:56

we don't need to do that if we've got a tidal wheel well in coastal areas that

03:01

needed a water wheel ingenious folks built cause ways to trap the water that [a cause way of rocks used to trap water]

03:05

poured in at high tide after the tide receded they release the trapped water

03:10

through a narrow opening and use it to power a waterwheel which then allowed

03:14

those medieval beachbum parents more time to surf gnarlieth dude though if you [medieval parents surfing by the shore of the beach]

03:19

remember one thing from this video let it be this that evil beach bum parents

03:23

are the worst so get your own board wax [medieval parents standing on surfboards as the sun sets]

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