Archimedes and a Boat Lift: the Falkirk Wheel
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2015
- tomscott.com - / tomscott - The Falkirk Wheel sits between Edinburgh and Glasgow, in the southern parts of Scotland, and it's the world's only rotating boat lift. There's some very clever design going on here -- and some physics that goes all the way back to Ancient Greece.
Ah yes, the Greek bloke with the bathtub. I also like the Italian guy with a telescope and the English dude with the falling apple.
What about the dude named after some crates?
Ah, I see you're a couple of fellow intellectuals! Who is your favorite physician? Mine is Alfred Einstein.
@@chikendagr8994 Rene Descartes??
To be honest, I don't think the Italian bloke was in the same ballpark as the greatest English observer of a falling apple. Perhaps the German guy who worked on calculators and calculus.
or that Austrian with a cat in a box! or that dude in a wheelchair.
I'm a Falkirk lad, born and bred - been to the Wheel once before. I remember the guide explaining that that it was powered by hundreds of hamsters. Quality banter.
There must have been some Englishmen in the audience. Scots love to wind up the English.
🤨
Hmm, it doesn't need much power, I wonder how many hamsters it'd actually need with proper gearing?
@@EvonixTheGreatest One big, gruff Scottish Hamster in a kilt. They dangle the Stone of Scone infront of it to make it run.
"The bloke with a bathtub" is now the official description of Archimedes.
***** Mission accomplished.
Graham Rich I imagined him accepting a BAFTA.
To be fair, if you walk up to someone in the street and ask them to name "the Greek bloke with the bathtub," I'll bet you any money that they say "Archimedes." I mean, after they say "what the f*** are you talking about?", Of course.
Oh well, that's better than the naked Eureka.
@@rob16248 I thought Eureka the greek goddess of nakedness?
what if you just built a sick ramp to jump the boats?
Yea good idea
hmm, good
Is a sick ramp bent over the toilet?
Looks like them Duke boys are in a heap of trouble again
Whatever floats your boat
I've been wanting to film up here for so long, and I finally managed to make it! This is such a beautiful bit of design, particularly when you start to think about the forces involved...
As someone experienced with that bit of Scotland and all I can say is that it’s a shame that all the utterly disgusting architecture surrounds it except from the kelpies which look good but when visited are just a large expensive waste of space
I love the Bloak with the bathtub
About the only nice area here. Glad your enjoyed yourself.
Just hope you didn't go visit the Kelpies because although they are promoted as a major tourist attraction for Scotland, once you get there you realise that visiting 2 giant horse heads made from metal isn't really a "Day out attraction"😂
@@copperrose4376 I agree as its very poor
As a physics student, this sort of real world application of basic laws makes my day.
We called that engineering
As an economist 90% of the cost of this vanity project was financed from English taxes. England needs the protection of its own government.
English taxes, while it is in Scotland?
@@Ricketik65 Like everything else in Scot. Funded by the British Government and England pays 90% of those taxes.
Forth Bridge, the carriers etc.
Were it built on English soil we would have had to give Scotland 10% of whatever it cost so that they do not have to pay one penny for English capital projects. It's called Barnett incidentals. Look it up then go figure.
@Crooked Skate Supply Co Why not or is the same as British poonds but oor oil?
Do you teleport Tom? You always seem to be everywhere with these awesome videos :P
+Drakotar and i think he did a vid about teleporting to
This channel is underrated. It has cooler stuff than a lot of the more popular channels.
+Drakotar ruclips.net/video/zJt8yzR2aoY/видео.html click here to have your answer.
+Drakotar I'm guessing clones, its the only logical explanation.
Drakotar He's a triplet.
All fun and games until someone turns up with a 501 ton boat!
+970357ers It wouldn't float.
+Eric14492 Anything can float.
QuixoticQuaver Not if there is not enough water. If you try to put a 501-ton boat into 500 tons of water, it will go aground. As mentioned in the video, that is basic physics.
+rainbowevil You beat me to the reply.
In practice, it could only handle something considerably less than 500 tons. You need clearance all around the boat: beam, draft, and length. To maximize capacity, you have to design the boat's dimensions specifically for the lock, just as Panamax ships are for the Panama Canal.
As a Scot, I have often taken visitors to see the Falkirk Wheel, and every last one of them was entranced by the design, the simplicity and the beauty of this engineering marvel.
Falkirk lad here, I managed to get up onto this while it was being built thanks to my dad somehow getting onto a tour group through his work; didn't do my fear of heights any good going up the shaky scaffolding they had mind you. Also been over it twice (both ways) on a boat, it's a superb piece of engineering and a *lot* easier than the 20-odd lochs you'd need otherwise!
I live about a mile from the Falkirk Wheel and regularly walk my dog there. It never ceases to astonish me.
"Eureka" - Ephebian for "Please pass me my towel"
One of my family once remarked how amazing it seemed for such heavy canal boats to cross an iron trough viaduct, and that they were surprised it could take the weight...
2200 years after Archimedes and they still don't know how displacement works...
Somehow I get the idea they secretly hate you.
While your family member may have been wrong, it’s not as bad as you make it seem. Boats require a certain amount of water to float, and someone should have remarked how amazing it is, that a suspended canal can hold all that water😅.
Has anyone ever said to you "GREAT SCOTT"
They have to me ;)
That's another channel.
So why do the Americans use 3 times as much as us? Is there a technical reason or do they just use more?
+George Jordan At a guess, I'd say it's larger homes on average, and air conditioning being more common! (I was using the 2010 Enerdata stats - should have sourced that in the video, actually.)
+George Jordan America has over 3x the amount of people, so more people not caring will raise the % up. America also has a lot more landmarks where light is a big factor(Vegas, NY, etc.). It's just an avg; not what's actually going on in every house.
+6production9 "America has over 3x the amount of people, so more people not caring will raise the % up." Proportionally, this would be the same everywhere and if they are outliers as you suggest, then all countries would have the same proportion of outliers. So this point is redundant. Likewise, the "landmarks where light is a big factor" are likely to be somewhat negligible when balanced with the huge population.
***** Thanks.
+Tom Scott about airconditioning you are probably right, since in England there's lots of rain n stuff :D
I want "Things you might not know" and "Amazing places" in book forms please!
why books?
getting information through books is slower, less interesting and not more informative
@@user-bj3pq2si2l You can leave a book in the toilet for your guests to leaf through while they're taking a sh*t.
I still want an unsettling video series called "Things you might not WANT to know"
@@user-bj3pq2si2l It really depends actually, sometimes people have a better time learning by reading than someone explaining it to you, like personally for me it depends what I'm learning, like for programming I study much better reading textbooks than sitting in a lecture hall
Amazing places in book form would actually be really useful as a travel guide!
Im from Falkirk and this is like a 10 minute drive from my house. Been on it for a school trip when i was little once. Never really understood how in depth it is. Amazing
Im doing a final project in physics over 1 of 5 topics. I saw "The Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift near Falkirk in Scotland" and I was like, I think tom scott should have made a video over this. sure enough, here it is. Thank you ♥
*Not accounting for surface tension
Just because I enjoy been difficult.
+Paul Hutchinson Not accounting for water level changes in the canal, either, but they've got a fancy system of sluice gates to keep that even :)
+Tom Scott also the original prototype was made in Lego!
and the Antoine wall (well what's left) runs over the top too!
+Tom Scott
Really loving the series.
So much I didn't know about.. :D
Learning is fun.
Gotta account for whether it's hard water or soft to.
@@MichaelEdmond Wait, wait, wait. I was literally just about to work out if I could build it in Lego. Dang but also yay!
I love the Falkirk Wheel, it's just a fantastic piece of modern engineering. It's a modern piece of engineering that isn't a bridge or a building or anything like that. It's, it's just wonderful.
It was engineered by the Butterley company Butterley near Ripley in Derbyshire some miles from Scotland. The Butterley company also built St Pancras railway station in London and the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle upon Tyne. I think their engineers where clued up on Archimedes principles.
Lovely subject, fascinating. What I love more is how short, sweet and to the point this video was. Less than 3 minutes and I have everything I ever wanted out of this and more. THANK YOU!
The other interesting thing about the Falkirk Wheel is that it was originally designed as a simple figure-of-eight shape. Then some arty type came along and put those pointy bits on the plans (they're supposed to look like a Celtic axe-head, allegedly). As a result, there's a big notch cut into one of the viewing platforms 'cause otherwise the pointy bits would hit it.
So remember folks: make sure the last person to touch the plans is an engineer, not an architect; otherwise the engineer will have to bodge it after you've cast the concrete, and that's expensive.
+Edward Cree But the edge of the pointy bits never extends past the path traced by the outside of the functional circle that the caissons rotate in. Since the wheel does full rotations instead of only going 180 degrees and then back again, there's nothing that the pointy bits would hit that the mechanically-necessary bits wouldn't hit too.
+IstasPumaNevada I'm fairly sure the pointy bits do stick out further, though not by very much (so it's not obvious from the video). However it's some years since I was there, and it's possible I could have misremembered.
However, there's definitely a notch in the concrete viewing platform - with a distinctly bodged appearance - that gives the wheel adequate clearance.
Edward Cree Not the best because the camera moves a bit, but if you watch where the rotating parts pass near the base you'll see there's no extra protrusion beyond the functional parts; the decorative parts appear to be curved circular and at the same radius as the edge of the track for the rotating tubs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel#/media/File:Falkrikwheelanimationmedium.gif
Perhaps they needed to modify the platform to conform with health and safety regulations? Such as keeping the moving parts further from arm's reach, or making sure there was enough room between the platform and the moving part so that if someone jumped or fell over the railing the clearance was too great for them to be crushed.
Whatever the case, I would like to see the boat lift in person someday. It's very impressive engineering.
I've been on the Archimedes 3 times, amazing holiday, love Falkirk, great escape room in Falkirk.
I live nearby the Falkirk wheel, and it is massive. I love going there and you can buy a ticket onto the boats that go on the wheel.
Kemlin
I hope you saw the kelpies too
I love that sneaky insult
+Karl Marx Facts aren't sneaky Karl their facts :)
+Jeff Jones "they're" not "their"
Sneaky bstd :)
Jeff Jones They’re not their.
J.J. Shank why don’t you try meeting and getting to really know Americans in America all over America and not just taking stereotypes you hear from tv and movies. Then come back to me and tell me if you think the same. Otherwise you are just being a stupid ass hole hiding behind a keyboard and viewing the world through your magical glowing information device of choice. 🙄
"Perfectly balanced, as all things should be"
The spiffing brit
This series is fantastic, really fun to watch.
It's shocking how close this is to where I live and I've never been to see it - It looks amazing! Maybe I'll head there one weekend coming up :) The kelpies are close by aren't they?
Yes
There is a nice little cafe as well.
+Stephen Horton If you cycle take the cycle path along the Forth and Clyde canal, great in good weather.
Surprising, I'm from New Zealand and I've visited this.
Its really close like a mile apart
Hubby and I were there on 30th May 2121 and saw the wheels turn upwards. I've never been the slightest bit interested in canals and barges etc, but this Wheel and all the cogs etc. are absolutely gob-smacking!
So no submarines then ...
+Penny Lane a submarine that would fit would still make it balanced, most submarines don't sink, but make their density exactly equal to water, so that they don't slowly go deeper and deeper. The only time it actually sinks is when it's descending.
sundur I was expecting "submarines can also float on the surface duh" remarks but what you said is actually clever :)
+Penny Lane There are intelligent people on the internet? Woah. Mindblown.
+Weber588 o-o Sounds like the title of the next video: ,,Things you might not know: there ARE intelligent people on the internet" ;-)
+Weber588 o-o
Say, intelligence and wisdom is not the same thing.
There are a LOT of intelligent people on the internet.
Wisdom is a rarer beast.
I'd love to visit this someday. My favorite part of the design is the planetary gearing system, which makes sure that the caissons stay dead level without any active controls.
I've been there, it is so awesome :) So glad you did a video on it!
It was one of the reasons why I wanted to do the trip to Scotland, it just really captivated me the first time I saw it! We then continued further and saw lots of other great stuff, of course :)
Theres something melancholy about you writing about good times and its dated 7 years ago
@@stoneageman18Aww, looking outside on a rainy day, I can relate! But I can assure you we have had plenty of good times since then, including a second visit to Scotland! :)
@@YensR I also went to this wheel 5 or 6 years ago. Family in Falkirk :)
@@stoneageman18 Ah, I see! I hope there is also positivity for you alongside the melancholy you express.
Watching this video as i’m at the lift! i’m on a trip in scotland and i didn’t know we were going to the lift but i recognized it from this video when we arrived!
Incredible. Thank you for making a video on it AND showing it in action. Love your work.
Watching this there..
HI TOM! Love your videos. I have a suggestion for your next two!
1. How cosmic rays interfere with computertech and how programmers actually have to make ways to error check because of it!
2. How you can find the speed of light by using a sausage and microwave oven (it can actually be done).
I look forward to these videos most of all. Another good one.
A picture of this lift was on one of my textbooks but I never really paid it any mind. Cool to know that it has such an interesting story behind it.
Did anyone else get goosebumps from the engineering marvel this thing is ?
I've seen this before, but it never gets old. This is amazing!
Ahhh! I remember visiting this place when my family was spending a weekend driving around Scotland!
Went there this past August. It is amazing.
I feel deja vu 0.o
+Liam Moscrop Yeah haha i feel like iv seen this before xD
+Car haha yessss
+Liam Moscrop I'm always worried, when someone comments like this, that it's an oblique reference to some error I've made in the video: duplicated a line, messed up an edit, or something. But if it's just déjà vu, I can't help you with that :)
***** Noooo sorry Tom, I didnt mean to get you worried, have you made a video on this boat lift before??? I just felt like you have
+Liam Moscrop Never been there before in my life. I've been hoping to get there for years!
0:47 hidden critic about American power consumption.
Thanks for mentioning the sinking object vs. floating object element of this. Now I get it!
So is there some special mechanism to ensure that both caissons contain about the same amount of water for balance or do they rely on keeping the levels in both canals within tight limits.
+BogusNotions The canals are kept at the same level with a system of automatic sluice gates. I did gloss over that bit!
I am sure Tom has done this before anyone else have the same feeling of déjà vu
i remember going on a barge holiday a few years back and stopping here, didn't go over the lift because it wasn't part of the route we where going on but we stopped and watched it for sometime, it was really quite interesting
I love his breathless British enthusiasm when he’s explaining stuff.
Been there twice, never realised how cool it actually is
That looks pretty cool.
Although 32kWh is Energy, not Power.
read about this a long time ago, 'tis really cool. one thing Scott didn't mention was the gearing to keep the caissons upright is pretty cool, although they arn't balanced well on their own so if they broke the boat might fall out...
Been there - seen that. Great to see operate in person. Wonderful bit of engineering.
Thank you for posting Tom. You make some great You tube content.
And it will pay for itself by A.D. 3256. Brilliant.
this is one cool thing to go see and the Scotts are thrilled to share it with the world
Extra thanks for all the subtitles. Amazing!
it is amazing I have been there with my Scottish grandsons good cafe also
I love my country 💙💙
Where do you live then?
I assume Scotland
i love the UK too
Arthek YORKSHIRE!
Bloody genius, and with the displacement notion, serendipitously so.
Discovered your channel yesterday, & the videos are really good!
Subscribed right away!
I wish I would be there at the same time to meet you. Sadly, that would break space and time.
Why does an average American house use three times as much energy as a British one?
+doe maeries Because 'muh freedomz and muh liberties' takes a fair ol' whack of power to achieve.
doe maeries My guess: Air condition, oversized fridge + seperate deep freezer, dry tumbler and asinine vertical axis washing machine that does not really clean your stuff unless you let it run it for at least 4 hours and leaves your laundry wet.
+o_O Vertical axis washing machines?? you are joking right? Who the hell come up with that idea and that what is used to mimic gravity? ahh i have to google this!
+doe maeries The U.S. is a huge place, a good chunk of which is either a desert, or a thousand miles closer to the equator. We simply have people living in warmer climates than the British do, and air conditioning takes _far_ more power than heating does.
Ignore the "muh freedumbs" and "greedy 'muricans" shitposters.
Hum, but top loading does not equals to vertical axis. I assume vertical axis means an, well, vertical axis where the force of gravity has very little to do when its spinning. but teh top loading machines i have seen are still horizontal axis, just loaded from a different place, and in that case the end result and efficiency should be very similar (ignoring other factors)
I live about 4 minutes up the road from this! pleasant surprise to see it appear on my suggested videos
live right by here and i never knew tom did a video on this!! hell yes
By £8.6 million from the European Regional Development Fund.
Where did they get the money from?
@@fanfeck2844 the European regional development fund
Need a Dispenser here!! , does repeating what the OP wrote mean you haven’t a clue? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@fanfeck2844 Well I'm sure that the Falkirk wheel has made fairly large profit from tourism, and with many other sites similar has made Britain's spot in the EU beneficial of these alone!
Need a Dispenser here!! , I thought it was a straight forward question, but I’m obviously not going to get the answer here. Bye
The red bar in the thumbnail made me think i had already watched this video, confusing it with youtube's own video progress bar.
We used to get taken here on school trips all the time, been around the boat lift a few times. Our school had this thing called “activity” week during the last week of school before the summer holidays. Every year we got taken here, and I think by the second time we were all bored. I wish I’d realised how damn cool the engineering and science behind this is.
Hi Tom
We are on a trip through scotland right now and because of your video we took a trip on a boat passing the Falkirk Wheel. For an Engeneer this was an absolute blast.
Keep on making these amasing videos.
Yours
Daniel
That's a nice message but this video is almost 4 years old.
Bruh, some desktop computers draw 1.5kW... and that can power this lift?!
I was amazed, mine can draw almost 1.6kw under full load
Feels unreal. Daamnn
No they don't. Show me any 1.5kW desktop computer you can buy. And I don't mean the rating of the power supply, I mean the actual consumption at load. If you want to calculate this you can enter the parts on pcpartpicker. Even at load most computers consume far less than you would expect.
My old 50cc motorbike made more power than that
@@Oscar-if6lq easy, one Shintel i9...
Serios: take a hedt Cpu and a 4 Titans for rendering, or a threadripper and a lot of harddrives. Nearly every server uses more.
Now I REALLY want to visit Scotland.
My love!!!!!! The most beautiful structure I have EVER come across.
I live close to the Falkirk Wheel and it's good to see people enjoy the way it works rather than the site or ride (even though they are good it's still feels amazing to hear someone talk about how it works!)
A question though, did you pass through Bonnybridge on your way there are any other place?
You need 32 Kwh, not 32 Kw. Kw is a measurement of power, Kwh is energy.
kWh is energy, not power.
szczypka
Physics
This remains one of my favourite videos.
I've been to the falkirk wheel many times and each time I enjoyed it
not industrial design, but civil engineering!!!!
"[...] Kilowatt-hours of power"
Naughty naughty, using a unit of energy in the context of power? Someone skipped physics
easy to get confused considering KW on its own would be a measurement of power either that or Tom just missed it on his script
Love your work! Catching up on stuff i have not seen....
I am reading my IELTS materials and found out this amazing engineering project. I would say that the science rocks! Always!
All I see is an fidget spinner that can carry boats
I've been there before!
It’s cool to see somewhere I’ve actually been before in a Tom Scott video! I have a photo of me and my family at Falkirk wheel on the fridge
Trust the Scottish to build something so awesome in the middle of nowhere.
It's 30 seconds away from a falkirk a small city/town with around 50,000 people
@@anythingelse5965 its a joke but okay
@@shahimagesyt but it's a joke built off nothing, so it just doesn't make sense and isn't funny
And for the benefit of so many people... (I.e. The countless millions who own/use a canal boat on that particular canal near a town of 50,000 people). Never mind, eh? It was shown on the login page photo on Windows 10 once! That's got to be worth it, right?
rpbsjy haha
"The greek bloke with a bathtub"
- Tom Scott, while talking about Archimedes
I thought I'd never be able to go to somewhere Tom has been, and then I found this video and my life has been made
Good job Tom, really liking your stuff.
Confirmed world's largest fidget spinner??
0.1 rpm
Sh😷t
And I live 24 minutes away from it
@@gamer234e i live 30 mins away
I live 2 minutes away
Thats what an avarage british house uses in 3 days or what an american house uses in 1 😂
I've watched Toms Videos for multiple days now. It's like travelling, just by watching videos...
It's because Americans have the freedom to use as much electricity as they want without getting beheaded by the King.
Actually, they don't... the US may not have a king, but in his stead, the president calls beheadings... it's just that he's a bit more lenient towards energy consumption...
+Ror shach If anybody can't get into a position of power than there's no freedom. Use your neurons once in a while and shut your ears
Ror shach This comment aged rather poorly given that you're literally imprisoning blokes for joke videos on RUclips while thousands of girls are raped by "Asian" (ubiquitously middle eastern) gangs.
I understand the physics behind it, but my mind is blown to think how clever this set up is.
Tom Scott......your videos are brilliant. You need to now visit the Anderton Boat Lift. A fantastic feat of Victorian engineering.
This indeed looks like an awesome construction! I'd have loved to see it run arund once (also sped up tp 20x or so) from the perspective the video thumbnail was taken!
Thanks for the videos Tom! Great channel!
It's weird to see a video of a monument from the place I live
I don't need to travel anymore: I can just watch Scott's videos to get to wonders :)