Wirtz pumps are really clever

[@SteveMould]

Jonathan (from the video) wanted to answer a recuring question from the comments. Adding it to the pinned comment seemed to be the best approach. Here's Jonathan: Several comments ask: why not replace the spiral by wrapping the pipe round a cylinder instead? Some suggest this might actually be better than a spiral, but this isn't true. To see why, you first need to remember that air is much more compressible than water. Second, remember that, however the pipe is arranged, inside it are 'plugs' of water alternating with plugs of air. The first plug of air after the open end is under low pressure. The second is under higher pressure and so on. The innermost plug is under the highest pressure of all. As the air pressure increases, the volume of the plug decreases (this is Boyle's law). To maximise the pressure, ideally the plugs of water should be arranged like a set of left-hand brackets (((. Now, the circumference of the spiral decreases as we go towards the centre, and this fact helps to maintain the arrangement of plugs of water as the plugs of air shrink. The shrinking circumference makes up for the shrinking air plug length. End of Jonathan. That said, cylindrical pumps have been built and they work fine - they're just not optimal. The sponsor is Incogni: The first 100 people to use code SCIENCE at this link will get 60% off of: incogni.com/science

[@1224chrisng]

🎵 Deja Vu! I've been in this place before (higher on the street) and I know it's my time to go! 🎵🎶

[@RahulJC]

I paused the video got busy with some work when i went to play it again poof gone... thanks for the reupload!!!

[@zilog1]

Switch to resolve already

[@dziban303]

Also there was an extremely audible fart at 7:37 which has been removed

[@giefuser]

It went away the moment you said ”I’ve never made a misstake in a video before”

[@vannomanno1]

It's proof of the kind of great man you are when you're able to admit the one and only mistake you've ever made in your life. Props to you! Cheers.

[@benholroyd5221]

I hope that when I make my first mistake, I too will have the courage to own up to it.

[@thekuba9352]

the pause after he confessed was gold aswell.

[@electricpaisy6045]

actually most of the science channels do this. That's a way how you can see if a source is legit or bs.

[@SlyPearTree]

He's not that great, this is clearly a Matt Parker video with a some cameos by Steve Mould but Matt is not mentioned anywhere in the title.

[@Nico-pb1sr]

​@@electricpaisy6045it's a joke that it's the only mistake he's ever made.

[@syrus3k]

The fact that guy has it pumping 8 metres up his garden with no power other than the stream is incredible. I love this stuff.

[@gregw1076]

The other main option is a hydraulic ram pump, Practical Engineering has a good video on that

[@IRMentat]

Decently mobile driver with some nice big paddles helping the spin. Still, it’s learnt been running a while given the amount of miss, etc on the wheel

[@JustinShaedo]

Maybe much quieter than ram pump 🤔

[@wizrom3046]

It is a brilliant pump. The only 2 problems are input fouling (which exists with any pump) And the rotary fluid coupling

[@ImieNazwiskoOK]

@gregw1076 I think it would have to be somewhere underground to get the potential it needs, and then maybe somewhere to remove the "wasted" water

[@ash36230]

I just love the fact he managed to get an entirely nature powered bog garden from a pump

[@jackroutledge352]

I wonder what came first - his desire for a bog garden, or his desire for an excuse to build a self-powered Wirtz pump?

[@kathorsees]

Agreed. Great taste, terrific idea and an execution to match both. I'm green with envy, tbh! 😅

[@danilooliveira6580]

@thePronto a proper bog garden shouldn't have still water. and if it does you can just place some fish there to eat the larvae.

[@3nertia]

@@danilooliveira6580 Also frogs

[@masthar401]

Oooh, a BOG garden... I was confused as to why someone wanted to make a garden specifically for bugs...

[@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies]

You're always told to worry about airlocks as an apprentice plumber, but it's so unintuitive that I had to see it for myself to really appreciate how much force it can take to overcome an airlock. I installed a shower drain without enough fall, so when the house slightly moved in an earthquake, it started flowing backward. There was baaaaaarely enough room for an airlock to form, but once it formed it could hold a column of water like at least 5 times as high as the height of the hump that the airlock needed to overcome. That buoyant force is HUGE! Was worried about my repair, thinking I stuffed up the same job twice, when I got called back. Thankfully the tenants kid had just jammed multiple toothbrushes and pieces of fabric down the drain for whatever reason.

[@MostlyGabriel]

Kids

[@cjsantiago4035]

Children

[@cabji]

Can confirm kids do this random shit all the time through every aspect of your life to send you mad.

[@cjsantiago4035]

@@cabji As a child, your welcome. 🥰

[@ET-cj8jo]

@@cjsantiago4035 ...... you're welcome.

[@kimjunkmoon2298]

To make the first smaller model work, you could make the diameter gradually smaller along with the radius, so the inner rings have the same volume as the outer rings.

[@hawkytalkyy]

That could result in the challenge of increased surface tension though, which was one of the challenges he already was facing. But good point!

[@Zahaqiel]

It's worth mentioning with air locking that air is more compressible than water, which means for the air to exert as much force on the next stage of water, the water behind it has to be exerting more pressure on the air than it would need to on just more water. In your three-stage demonstration, the water and air have time to find their natural equilibrium such that the pressure being exerted between each section of air and water equalises with the outside air. So the air inside is uncompressed, and when the water is forced to move again, the air will begin compression before it starts exerting enough force to start moving the next section of water at the same rate as the water behind it. It's kinda like pushing a block of wood with another block of wood via a spring... but also up and over a hill.

[@williamsalgado9738]

perfect explanation

[@chrissinclair4442]

Yeah, that's part of the principle behind a hammer pump. The compressible air acts as a spring.

[@kyles5960]

Beitiful explanstion

[@Zahaqiel]

@@chrissinclair4442 Got to love the simplicity of the hydraulic ram pump.

[@Trip_mania]

That's incorrect, the air pressure doesn't equalize, otherwise the water would fall back to the bottom of each section. You can see that at rest the water surface is higher on the right than in the left which can only be due to differences in air pressure.

[@grahamcracker_Photography]

What's really cool is that you don't need any back flow prevention valves with these. The air lock stops the reverse flow of water if it stops. I work in irrigation sales and engineering and this stuff always amazes me. The physics of any pump system and how to create pressure is just cool stuff.

[@KayleMaster]

I had one of these. Back flow valve actually helped increasing the head, pretty much double.

[@vpmojarvideo26]

What's really cool is that you don't need any back flow prevention valves with these. The air lock stops the reverse flow of water if it stops. I work in irrigation sales and engineering and this stuff always amazes me. The physics of any pump system and how to create pressure is just cool stuff.

[@MttGaming904]

ya

[@marikah6198]

So it doesn’t work if it’s completely submerged in water?

[@emilejetzer7657]

This made me think of how some mechanical vacuum (and probably other) pumps are made, with two interlocking spirals, one static, and one spinning, trapping fluid towards the centre and out (or towards the edge and out, depending). They’re thin enough that they can be stacked and powered with the same motor, getting down to a pretty low pressure.

[@Chris-du7hi]

Scroll pumps, neat stuff.

[@slickrick3650]

Hydra-Lock was a term an old boss of mine coined that would happen when torquing bolts when rebuilding transmissions. If there were any fluid in the blind holes, the seal of the part that was being torqued would sometimes fail due to a small amount of fluid being overlooked in the bottom of the hole not allowing matting surfaces to hold proper amounts of pressure.

[@atimholt]

Just had a thought. You can totally sidestep the problems of a change in radius by wrapping the tubing around a cylinder instead of spiraling inward. It'd also let you have an arbitrarily huge number of windings.

[@lemonlemonlemonlemonlemonlemo]

i wonder, would that be more or less efficient?

[@reaganharder1480]

@@lemonlemonlemonlemonlemonlemo As someone who first learned of these pumps in this video, I expect efficiency would be quite similar, if not perhaps a little higher due to all your windings being the same diameter. I'd love to see it tested though, and honestly I am very much wishing that I lived next to a stream/river right now.

[@GiantSavage117]

I think this would be less efficient because of how the air locks work. With the spiral design the pressure is more concentrated in the inner radius of the spiral because there is more water pressing on it from the longer parts of the spiral. If you have a uniform radius spiral the pressure will be more evenly distributed and therefor have less pressure to push it up the line in the end. This is just an educated theory though, im no expert with mathematics or fluid dynamics. This needs some experimentation to prove. Great idea by the way.

[@bgugi]

I believe you'd still want a decreasing diameter - because the absolute pressure at each stage increases, the pad of air shrinks somewhat as it moves through the pump. It isn't a huge effect, your pad should lose half its volume at 33 ft of head on the output.

[@leojohn1615]

@@GiantSavage117 ok im defintly not qualified to talk on this but could you make up for it by narrowing the pipe as it goes round the cylinder?

[@Devil-Made]

I just realized why I like your videos so much. I’m not an engineer. I like to know how things work, but often your topics are a bit advanced for a casual learner like myself (funnily enough, not this video). But I’m still drawn to these videos. I think it’s because I’m a visual learner, and you present everything visually and with great attention to detail. Whenever I explain things to others I often wish I could manipulate the image, or diagram, or make it 3-D, or color different parts, all to make the explanation easier to understand. Even when I’m just explaining a project or setup or something to myself, I’ll often visualize in my head color-coded segments, or identifying numbers, or what the internal mechanisms look like when in action. You do that. The way you present your videos is very similar to the way my brain works. It’s pleasing to watch even if some subjects are a little beyond me. Thanks for so many great videos!

[@richardwebb2418]

Yup. This. 👌👍

[@dolf1n1]

well said totally agree

[@jurajpartl4797]

I am a bit late to the party, but Veritasium has a video titled "The Biggest Myth In Education" about how learning types (such as visual learner) are not correct and do not make a difference. I think it is true that some of us are better at math and some are better in remembering things, but after all, we all learn the best the same way. I really encourage you to watch it, it is very high quality video based on experiments and data, so next time, you will know that we all learn the same way and everyone is and isnt a "visual learner"! ;)

[@thecoffeeshrine2062]

@@jurajpartl4797 My issue with that video is that they try to single out methods by stimulus, when learning typically happens better with repetition and with engaging more senses. Repetition also means you are spending more time receiving the information to commit to memory which introduces 'frequency of a stimulus' to assist in committing information to memory. When he showed a visual AND said a corresponding word, generally people could remember the information better; another caveat is that people that initially performed better ALSO used other memorization techniques to enhance/overcome the challenge of just 'rememberizing' using ONLY a visual flash card OR hearing a word.

[@michaelterry1000]

ONCE AGAIN, I tip my hat to KZbin. I was a horrible student in school. Even though I have a college degree I chose the path of least resistance in getting that degree. If I were in a class room and someone was trying to teach me the physics of a pump my eyes would just simply glaze over. Here, a combination of the comfort of my living room, the ability to re-watch portions of the video, the lack of stress from worrying about what was going to be on the test and the generally entertaining skills of the hosts and who he interviews results in genuine education. Needless to say, that education is also 100% free. Hats off to youtube. Thank you for your post.

[@SirMikeyD]

Best, most succinct summary I’ve yet seen of the advantages of educational video-on-demand. KZbin and similar services (Patreon, Vimeo, etc.) are incredibly powerful learning tools for the reasons mentioned.

[@jacobmarshall23]

Thank you two, for being the silver linings, in a world that loves to complain.

[@indienag5108]

@@jacobmarshall23 aren't they just complaining about actual education?

[@superamogusbros5594]

Don't tip your hat to KZbin, tip your hat to Steve.

[@michaelterry1000]

@@indienag5108 No, I was complaining but not about 'actual education', I was complaining about the school system which is NOT synonymous with education.

[@neilmcmahon]

I love the way the garden pump is using the flow of the river to cause pumping rotation. Quite ingenious.

[@TwilightMysts]

Somewhat to my amusement, I literally just independently invented this concept in my head a week ago. I did have a bit of a head start since I had seen concepts for spiral pumps, but they were limited to the center of the spiral, not several feet above the top. But I randomly got thinking about it and realized you could potentially pump it higher if done right. I actually came up with an idea that could potentially have a reasonably limitless height (meaning as high as you could build most structures that would need a pump, ie several hundred feet). It is purely abstract though, so I could easily have a lot of stuff wrong. But even though other people beat me to it by centuries, I think it is cool that I am able to come up with concepts like this on my own as well.

[@Hogscraper]

Love seeing Matt Parker doing Matt Parker things and even cooler you both found reason to visit this amazing pump! It's always amazing to see older tech with such a novel approach to solving a problem.

[@Gekko-t4i]

but what if... it's not Matt Parker

[@NotKyleChicago]

​@user-gu2fh4nr7h then it's a "Parker bog" in the sense of "Parker square"

[@swedneck]

@@Gekko-t4i matt faker

[@standupmaths]

I cannot believe Beard Matt is making videos with Steve behind my back.

[@avengemybreath3084]

It’s interesting that the combination of Trey Parker and Matt Stone would be interested in science

[@TimeBucks]

Wonderful explanation!

[@حكايةحكاية-ح1م]

nice

[@MdShoyaib-nu8pk]

Nice

[@appuchakku2303]

👍

[@tanudhepte]

👍

[@kuchalagmotivationalvichar2044]

👍

[@SimpleEarthSelfReliance]

The amount of questions this answered for me about water in my long range water pipes over the hills is priceless. Thanks Steve.

[@MttGaming904]

ya

[@matthewmiller6068]

Around 3 minutes, you did a way better job explaining why dehumidifier, HVAC, and humidifier drain lines are so critical to avoid any "humps" than EVERYTHING else I've ever read or understood.

[@ameteuraspirant]

I was so pumped to watch this and then it vanished! I thought I was going crazy.

[@Donclat]

It went bad for me when he was saying "I don't make mistakes in my videos" lol

[@benholroyd5221]

"pumped" I see what you did there....

[@Lord_common_sense]

​@@benholroyd5221ye a bad joke but that attract likes easily

[@bradley3549]

I lost it right when the chap was explaining to Steve why his first design failed. Talk about a cliffhanger.

[@Xiradrem]

I love these! Here in Brazil we use something called "carneiro hidráulico" - I think it translates to gravity pump in English. But it's a way to move water up from a reservoir using only the water weight from it. You should take a look, I think you'll find it very interesting as it also uses pressure to move things up.

[@mralistair737]

That is called a ram pump in english, or a hydraulic ram pump. neat things

[@zorak964]

Boa recomendação!

[@lanceanthony198]

This is honestly the Wirtz pump design I’ve ever seen…

[@smilerbob]

I think the puns are going to _spiral_ out of control with this video

[@benholroyd5221]

I think its wirtz it though

[@patricktilton5377]

The water comes out the other end in 'SQ'-Wirtz units . . .

[@copperstaterocketguy1640]

...OHHH mannn those dad jokes😜😜

[@truld9103]

For wheel😂

[@richardwebb2418]

I genuinely love when you call out and correct your mistakes. That's engineering. Theorize iterate redesign, haha plus it's about knowledge over ego. 👌 Also he is Jonathan Deane if anyone else didnt read the description. Lol

[@pierrevillemaire-brooks4247]

This video is a shinning example of how collaborative work can reach the whole world 😀

[@patrickrollinson2724]

I saw this pump mechanism being used on the White Nile in Uganda, it used the fast flowing water to spin a water wheel on which the spiral was mounted. I have always wondered how it actually worked

[@Rob-e8w]

I wonder if this was an Archimedes screw which I've seen used for pumping water from the Nile into irrigation ditches?

[@Grunttamer]

no an archemedes screw is like a ramp that spirals around a central point more like a spiral staircase. @@Rob-e8w

[@ynraider]

@@Rob-e8w Africans invented this screw...Archimedes trained in Africa... It's a Kemetic screw...

[@vyor8837]

@@ynraider egypt was more Mediterranean in people and culture, not super african. It's also from around 300BC.

[@spruce1509]

I find the fact his pump is powered by the river as well very satisfying. It's really cool he was so happy to help you out as well

[@David-yz6kr]

I am amazed that after all this years I took an interest in such topics there still are apparently lots of seemingly simple topics and effects I never came across or thought about. Brilliant!

[@williaml9510]

The air lock concept at 2:50 is a general concept of how air hammer can occur. If one of those air gaps decided to move to the next high point and stop it would cause air hammer causing vibration , noise and possible damage. Lots of redundancy built into municipal water mains to assure this.

[@Beliefisthedeathofintellect]

By signing up to that company you not only lose a wack load of money. But you give away your power of attorney do it your self. The compo is incredible

[@TheRealDrJoey]

This pump reminds me of a water ram, which has always seemed to me like (almost) getting something for nothing.

[@misterdeedeedee]

obviously nothing is free, it uses flowing water which is gravitational kinetic energy, but on the human scale it is functionally free since it is energy we would really never be using otherwise nor does it have any appreciable effect on the system or environment (like a dam). its about as "free" as solar and geothermal and such.

[@TheRealDrJoey]

@@misterdeedeedee Duh.

[@misterdeedeedee]

@@TheRealDrJoey then why even bother making your original comment 🙄

[@TheRealDrJoey]

@@misterdeedeedee Why bother re-stating, in many more words, the point I'd already made?

[@prdoyle]

Yeah, they both seem like perpetual motion until you look really closely.

[@zenglom]

Wow! This is why my AC leaks inside my room even though the tube is going mostly down. I am close to getting my PhD in physics and I did not know this at all. Thanks a lot for this video!

[@petersack5074]

Most modern educational programs, leave out ' mother nature '..../ Gravity and atmospheric pressure , function hand - in - hand. THAT, is not taught ! One must know , and understand that relationship. Which is why , any good engine mechanic, can fix any engine . For me, it is small engines / any type . 2 cycle / 4 cycle...diesel, whatever. The gravity -weight / fluid density / surface tension of all liquids, varies. Whatever equipment your using / fixing, you should understand that, and fix accordingly. Carburetors especially - fuel injected, not so much as understanding ' hydraulics '. Anyway....good luck in your studies, SIR ! (brother was electrical engineer, nephew was A+++ chemical engineer - i'm an electronics / computer tech. ))

[@Psilomuscimol]

​@@petersack5074I'm decent with electric powdered stuff. I have a good ebike

[@SuqMadiq]

There is a gold concentrating device that uses a similar spiral to seperate gold from the black sand. Not a plug, but I believe it's called the "gold wheel". It doesn't use an airlock, but it does use the geometry of a spiral to carry the denser gold up to the center of the spiral while the black sands are washed out by water.

[@joe2mercs]

Two observations. The first is that If you used PTFE tubing this would minimise the adhesive effect of the water molecules on the tube lining. The second is that perhaps the tubing does not need to be a diminishing spiral but might consist of drum of equal diameter coils set along side each other; the last coil bridging the radius to a central rotary outlet. A further refinement might the use of a non-return valve at the rotary outlet to avoid the need for surface tension within narrow exit piping to perhaps allow a water butt to be filled at an inlet at its base. Fascinating stuff.

[@JethroTanko-kt2ln]

Amazing explanation, just love the fact that they exist an automatic free water pump that works with just the a stream of water😊

[@pirobot668beta]

I've seen a pump like this used 'backwards' as a gas-meter. Gas flows into the center bit, causes the spiral to rotate. A counter keeps track of rotations. The working fluid part would be an oil of some sort.

[@HighOnTacos]

I like your logic behind turning it by hand but I think a steady speed is important. Every time you stop and start I saw the top section of water lose it's airlock and flow down into the next - With steady pressure that may not happen. Hopefully you revisit this one someday!

[@matthewjohnson3656]

You mean the part in the vertical tube going up? Depending on your intent and design, it may not matter. Getting rid of the air locks in that section will reduce overall height you can pump but not volume over time. So if your spiral is big enough or the height is small enough, it wouldn't matter.

[@NoName-zn1sb]

its airlock

[@stevestarcke]

Wonderful explanation! I ran into this problem when distilling dichloromethane with a spiral condenser. The multiple airlocks generated enough pressure to pop the stoppers on the apparatus. Now I finally know why. Kudos!

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

You're only supposed to use those condensers vertically running to your collection flask.

[@giga-chicken]

If you're interested in pumping systems like this you could do a video on the physics behind a ram pump, great way of turning flow rate into head pressure.

[@Xorthis]

Anti spam services are great. If anyone actually does get through, remember, always ask who is calling and don't say anything confirming who you are or aren't. Also, under UK law, if you tell the caller to remove you from their list and set as do not call, they have to do that and pass on to the list owner that you are DNC. If you are called again, they are in breech of UK law. (I worked for a company that uses these lists and this was part of our training). Keep it up, Steve

[@spanishchair]

This is the real life equivalent of bug exploits in video games.

[@JohnnyTiscali]

Honestly the shot of the earlier Wirtz pump is very beautiful, I absolutely love the contrast!

[@lebeinderbadewanne]

Also an interesting pump mechanism ist the hydraulic ram pump. I've seen these pumps a few times here in the Swiss Alps when alpine herders had to pump water to higher ground without electricity.

[@Rubrickety]

It’s very cruel to the poor rams, though.

[@Bbonno]

How about driving a ram pump with a pump like this? It's probably hard to make that work, but it would remove the need to go downhill from the intake.

[@tylermcnally8232]

​@@Bbonno this pump won't generate much head pressure. So effectively a useless pump.

[@Bbonno]

@@tylermcnally8232 don't ram pump typically triple the pressure by wasting some of the water?

[@JohnnyWednesday]

@@Rubrickety - that's the whole point - the swiss famously hate Rams

[@RomanIvanchenko-l6h]

❤😊Итересно и неожиданно воздух толкает воду. Почти капелярная ситема не ожидано Итересно 😊

[@stevenlynch3456]

Something that I haven't seen anybody address was the in-video comment from your expert about "the air lets it pump twice as high". This is because water weighs a lot. Vertical height of only liquid water is commonly called "head" by plumbers. The head is what takes a lot of energy to create; water flowing horizontally takes very little energy (minimal friction with a liquid). Pushing a column of only liquid water up vertically requires a lot of effort; imagine pushing a 20lb weight over your head vs a 50lb weight over your head. Pushing a vertical column of air->water->air->water->... means the water can travel higher because the entire tube isn't carrying water (which is heavy) - only part of the vertical tube is carrying water. Using the weight analogy, water->air->water is like pushing a 20lbs weight over your head plus some space-filling feathers that weigh very little yet support another 20lbs weight. For a given amount of water, having a buffer (that weighs less than the water, like air) interrupt the water means the transported water can reach higher heights. Now, don't expect this to be an easy mathematical relationship. Yes, having sections of air interrupt the water column means that you can push higher, but water is incompressible while air is compressible. With a large enough Wirtz pump, you could get the output water so high that the air will become compressed enough to pop through the meniscus (curved interface between water section and air section) of the high-surface-tension water in the vertical output pipe. This should always happen before the air gets so compressed as to reduce the volume of the air by a huge amount (unless you use a really, really, really small diameter vertical output tube to get a really high surface tension that is hard to break).

[@VeeTheGator]

I tried to make a spiral algae farm 'solar panel' using clear pipe and very soon had this effect stump me in reverse! The water lock on it was so high that my little eco pump couldnt overcome it from all the areas in the spiral and it didn't work! Great video and really amazing explanations as always! Thank you!

[@philjafo2]

This is remarkably similar to the way a scroll compressor works in an air conditioner

[@Heretic306]

That's exactly what I thought when I saw the thumbnail. There is clearly some of the same principles at play here. Collecting from the outer edge and moving air/fluid into the center outlet. In one case the pump itself is moving, and in the other there is second scroll essentially performing that function.

[@truongtran-sl6rh]

ok

[@phongtran-mw9dm]

zzz

[@KhueDinh-bd8ym]

zzz

[@nguyennguyen-mt3fe]

zzz

[@TheZoneTakesYou]

Each slug of water also has its own surface tension battle to not get reduced to foam and allow the air to backflow

[@Njazmo]

Water doesn't "reduce to foam", water can have 3 different states, solid, liquid, or gas. Foam isn't one of them.

[@TheZoneTakesYou]

​@@Njazmo Lol. I'm not talking about a phase change. There's a point at which the surface tension of the minimum surface is overcome and air bombards through the liquid in channels which 'pulverize' the previously minimum-surface-area miniscus. As this happens, the water particles are knocked about randomly as if they were air particles. You can observe it briefly at 9:22 The water reduces from plugs with minimum area meniscuses to turbulent foamy slush and then back to plugs when the air pressure reaches equilibrium.

[@davidbloxham4876]

In the end, this is a gravity pump. Hand motion drives layers of water lifted by the rotating tubes into the center outlet of the coil. The number of layers is simply the number of winds in the tubing. Once delivered to the outlet it then simply is able to fall back down. Just as the trapped air causes a cumulative resistance (akin to a series circuit of electrical resistors), the force applied by the trapped water will be additive, by the number of loops in the tubing. So it will push water up the vertical, but to a limited degree. If you know the values of these elements it would be easy to calculate just how high it will pump water.

[@FlaneerBeer]

I love how he could have just used transparent tubing in the first design, but of course Steve built a transparant cut-through version

[@StarkRG]

It looks like he already tried with transparent tubing (he showed the guy two versions), but the tubing he used was too small.

[@xzendon]

Cody's Lab made a version of this that works off of purely thermal gradient. I wonder if you could boost the effectiveness of the pump by doubling up and using both mechanisms at the same time. Additionally, I'd think that this would work best in the form a hose wrapped around a drum.

[@JRNimmo]

I'm interested by the idea of the hose around the drum and wonder what it would do to the efficiency

[@willguggn2]

Intuitively some sort of spiral should be optimal, because the air columns gets compressed more and more with each rotation. The water should _just_ not overflow on every rotation for maximum pressure.

[@Andreas-ov2fv]

My natural sciences teacher remarked on a similiar effect to the trouble you had with pumping water into the tube. He called it the pipette effect. I'm transliterating that from Norwegian and am not able to find a citation for it, so I expect it's known by another name. As I understood it it shouldn't have happened with a tube that diameter, but possibly the coloring added to the water made it more viscous. He was trying to explain to us how water will always, if in continuous contact, level out. Kids' stuff, but he was an excellent teacher so he had made a glass cutway device to demonstrate for us. The device had five vertical glass pipes of varying diameter, the largest probably two centimetres and the smallest in the low milimetres, connected at the bottom by a horizontal channel with a diameter of about a centimetre. The pipes were spaced maybe half a centimetre apart, edge to edge, and open to the air at the top. He called out the question of how the water would behave if he poured it into the largest pipe? We were kids, so the theories varied, but in the end most rallied behind the idea of the water levelling. And of course it did - except in the smallest pipe, where it squeezed higher vertically by about a centimetre compared to the other pipes. He said we were in essence correct, but that there were lots of oddities and exceptions in science that were equally fascinating as the truths and rules, and that he didn't expect us to know about or being able to hypothesize "the pipette effect" at age 10. It's funny the things you recall 30 years later.

[@salaciousBastard]

Was the last pipe a result of some sort of capillary action?

[@Andreas-ov2fv]

@@salaciousBastard That looks like precisely the right term, in English. The glass he used was remarkably like the one with the blue fluid in this article, except that the diameters were wide enough that only the last pipe showed the effect. www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/capillary-action-and-water

[@WJS774]

Remember that in the first model, the "pipes" aren't round, so they don't actually _have_ a "diameter". They may appear fairly large in the plane that we are observing from, but they are much flatter than they are wide. Capillary action only requires one dimension to be small to take effect.

[@PunakiviAddikti]

I rarely visit sponsors in videos, but this one actually got me interested because I've been getting calls from France and somewhere in India or something. Apparently my phone number has been sold (big shock, it was probably Facebook who sold it) and getting my data removed from these parasites would help me a lot.

[@jaredtandle2596]

Home inspectors need to watch this.

[@FeastFamine]

The output at height should be in a reservoir of water too to slow the water lock air bubbles from rising and pulling in atmospheric air; this will result in greater delivery height.

[@IRaiIKyU]

It would be quite interesting to do all these tests that work because of the airlock you mentioned with water mixed with soap, because i imagine that these tests would be very different if the water lost its surface tension. Maybe the pump stops working or the maze would fill up all the way because the soapy water could not trap these air pockets anymore

[@yaksaredabomb]

Great idea!

[@YodaWhat]

*You need to have the vertical riser divided into small channels, to prevent the air bubbles rising too easily and rapidly.* I recommend using a bundle of small-diameter tubes. For convenient handling, you can stuff the bundle inside a larger tube. It might even help you to have most of the spiral divided that way too, as narrow channels. @SteveMould

[@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies]

What's the downside of not having it divided? Does the water create too much back pressure as it falls, or?

[@YodaWhat]

@@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies - The basic problem is explained in the 'airlocks' section around 2:20, where _too great a height_ the liquid must be lifted prevents liquid flow. Similarly for the vertical riser of the output, too great a liquid height will prevent liquid flow, possibly rendering the pump useless. But the liquid previously had air bubbles in it. If the bubbles can be prevented from coalescing and rising to the top, then the average liquid density is lower, so it can be lifted higher by the spiral pump. _Small diameter tubes slow the merging and rising of the entrained air bubbles._ Thus a tubing bundle in the vertical riser will enable pumping to a greater height, without making the pump larger.

[@thaddeuswalker2728]

I did something similar in javascript and browser graphics and made a spiral that goes in faster to maintain a similar volume for the incompressable liquid and a shrinking volume for the gas. I was just thinking in terms of compressing gas and using the raised liquid to also compress in a separate mechanism gas as it returns I had in mind two grooved panels of something, perhaps plexiglass would work for your needs and a sheet of metal for the spiral. It seems to me like teflon coating might be ideal.

[@PlayNowWorkLater]

There’s a company that makes a similar pump for poorer areas in the world. It’s pretty cheap, and pumps the water a long ways. I came across it years ago, so there may be others now. But the company I saw was aQysta and the product was the Barsha Pump. Was really great, because it was helping some families plant crops in an otherwise dry environment. It requires a nearby creek or river to run it though.

[@HellecticMojo]

"I need to find a transparent version or it's not a Steve Mould video" Damn straight

[@FetchTheCow]

I think you need a smaller diameter rising pipe. You can see starting at 12:02 that there isn't enough surface tension to support the weight of the higher slugs of liquid, so they slowly spill downward through the adjacent air gap.

[@MadMathMike]

You do some great videos, but this has been my favorite that I can remember recently! Corrections of past videos. Fascinating news concept. On location content from an expert in the field. Really, really liked this one!

[@SteveMould]

Thank you!

[@austinolney9118]

I don't know how I stumbled across your video, but the genuine excitement when you saw the pump "ohhh, I see it. See it there?" was awesome! Very good video.

[@suyunbek1399]

That fish story is absolutely mythical. I would like someone to create an atmospheric videogame plot about it. How the fish got in that situation. What was his childhood like. What hardships did he overcome in his life? How did he cope with being trapped and doomed to life in isolation with no hope to return back? How fast did he give up on saving himself? How drastically was his perception changed in the lonely psychodelic environment? How much did he hate his resque after all these hopeless eternities?

[@Cerafem]

That pump your friend has is awesome, this is honestly a ton more interesting than just some archimedes screw design. Those separate chambers of air are basically storing energy as pressure between packets of (virtually) incompressible fluid so it makes sense you get so much extra vertical movement out of it. I had made a passive drip watering system for a container garden on my deck and learned you pretty much have to always think of it in terms of communicating vessels and +/- pressurized air chambers when you want to imagine what will happen. I didn't vent the 5 gallon bucket feeding the half inch irrigation tubing and the pressure of water pulling out without air pulling in *completely* collapsed it. Like exactly like seeing those metal barrels be heated, sealed, and cooled and watch it crush itself.

[@smity25ca]

I remember one of these on my grandpa’s farm, attached to a water wheel 7 or 8 feet in diameter. But it started out as 4” diameter and shrank in diameter, the closer the spiral got to the centre where it was about a 1” output 🧐

[@chinhnguyen-l4k]

zzz

[@joda7697]

So basically, the height that you can pump water to is proportional to the diameter of the tube rings times the amount of winds? (assuming they're all at relatively the same diameter, as in not going toward the middle like your first failed pump)

[@Pystro]

Actually, about twice that product. (Because of the entrapped air that is mentioned at 6:27.) In fact, the actual height equals the diameter (of the windings) times the number of windings divided by the fraction (of the scoop's trajectory) that is below the water level. (Or something like that.) [edit:] This is assuming that the air doesn't bubble up in the vertical pipe. In reality the air will go up past the water in that pipe and the water will flow down past the air, limiting the height. In the worst case the height is indeed just the diameter times the nr of windings.

[@Teradolon]

We all want to see the limts

[@landsgevaer]

@@Pystro the air also needs to be pressurized, and then decreases in volume, so it should be a bit worse than that. 😉

[@hazza2247]

@@landsgevaerokay mr.🤓 i was going to say the same thing

[@thezyreick4289]

kind of, the stream still needs to be strong enough to turn the wheel. the more windings you have, the more water you have in the wheel, the heavier it weighs, and harder it is to turn. If you notice that guys setup, he has some pretty massive fins on his wheel, and that stream is flowing at a pretty good speed, but his wheel is turning very slow in comparison to the stream

[@M0RN1NGD0V3]

the energy of this video is so positive, calm and friendly thank u for sharing

[@iduncan5424]

the way steve skips to the pump excitedly at 5:00 is so cute and awesome, truly has a childlike wonder for the things he shows us.

[@Skeptical_Numbat]

In many ways this seems to be a version of the ancient Archimedes Screw, relying on gravity to provide some of the energy for the motive force moving the liquid. I'd be interested to see what modulations of the head pressure (water height) could be achieved by doing things like: changing the diameter of the vertical tube, adding a one-way valve, adding an air bleed valve, etc. Also, what effect having the spiral formed from a tapering cylinder, with quite a wide mouth (rather than the parallel-walled tube) would have on the system.

[@fliegeesser4665]

This is what I also concluded

[@JosueReynoso]

The Arquímedes screw is the basic approximation, but this one is enclosed, so the physics in the system are very different. In Archimedes screw, the whole system operates at atmospheric pressure and water cannot travel higher than the screw itself. The pump in the video takes advantage of "air locks" to build pressure up, which is the whole point of the video.

[@shellsterdude]

This is really interesting. It would be cool if you could also cover hydraulic ram pumps. I'd be curious which one is more efficient as well.

[@RowanHawkins]

A hydraulic ram pump works off a high head pressure to get the water hammer happening. And then it can use that energy to push up much higher than the head side.

[@the11382]

Since hydraulic ram pumps don't use air, they should be more efficient. Air is compressable, water is not.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

​@@the11382This depends on how you define efficiency. Ram pumps might use less energy per se, but they also waste water outside of the source reservoir, whereas this pump delivers 100% of the water that enters it to the endpoint.

[@TaserFish-qn2xy]

The Wikipedia article for ram pumps says they can be built very efficiently. Like 60-80 percent in terms of energy efficiency. The problem is that you need a substantial speed/pressure difference. So they work best if you have a little dam rather than an open stream. Then you can divert a sizeable fraction of the whole stream. This pump can likely be built nearly 100% efficient in the tube part. But the waterwheel driving it is just the absolute bottom rung of hydropower - on the flip side, the ecosystem is undisturbed. If you drove it with a dam and a Kaplan turbine it would likely be more efficient than the ram pump. But at that point you're totally overengineerimg it. There are reasons why neither of these pumps are commonly used in large scale water infrastructure.

[@TaserFish-qn2xy]

It still needs to "waste" the water to drive the wheel. 99% of the water is not ending up in the garden.

[@AbyssRein]

I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THIS THE DEMONSTRATION AT 2 MINS WAS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING

[@concinnity9676]

I like how you held a straight face at 1:00, after saying "I never made a mistake in a video before." I thought you might break into a smile, and reveal the absurdity of the statement. But you held a straight face, which also showed it to be false, and I was the one who cracked up. As for me, I never made a mistake at all. One time I thought I made a mistake, but I was wrong.

[@speedscript1]

It's proof of the kind of great man you are when you're able to admit the one and only mistake you've ever made in your life. Props to you! Cheers.

[@Dynamic-Productions]

Such a cool idea! You chain them to get higher and use the power of the water to spin them (like a series of water wheels)?

[@greyw0lv]

You could probably chain them, but I'd expect it to be easier to just use a larger Wirtz pump if you need more height.

[@HellaLegitFoo]

The size isn't infinitely scalable. There's a rather low limit to how large diameter the tubes can be before failure.

[@nightbringar7558]

The main limitation of trying to chain them together is that you would have to power the rotation after a certain height. The flow coming out of even the first one might not be sufficient to force the next one to rotate. Once you're independently powering the rotation, in practical uses, you could just use a standard pump.

[@AbsoluteHuman]

​@@HellaLegitFooas far as I can see the real limit to the number of loops that could help highten the water level is the compression of air... Air bubbles will become squashed and slip. But you can probably mitigate it to some extent by cleverly arranging the ingoing spiral.

[@RMDragon3]

I don't think chaining them would be very easy, as the higher wheels wouldn't have anything to power them. You could pump extra water to create a current by letting some of it go back down, but that would probably be quite inefficient. And I'd guess that using the force from the exit of one pump to move the next wouldn't work (or at least not better than just using the first pump for the whole way) because of conservation of energy. If you had to chain them, your best option would probably be to put water wheels on the river itself and use gears and axles to move the higher pumps.

[@u1zha]

Would be great if this was taught in schools. The same lesson where you learned about joined vessels and levels being the same... would totally blow kids minds with a plot twist where air enters the tubes and changes the picture completely. Like at 1:40

[@grekygrek]

I would die happy in Jonathan's bog garden. It's so gorgeous and the wirtz pump is just a chefs kiss

[@tsilmanav]

The first 3mins 30sec of this video are the coolest thing on the internet I've seen in the last year!

[@PiotrBarcz]

Steve, I'd love to see a video where you design a bigger version that you can either hand crank or run electrically or something similar and see just how high you can get the water to go using a reasonable design.

[@GrahamToal]

certainly a motor-driven pump would let you explore the relationship between rotation speed and the head collapsing, especially if you were able to compare against different tubing materials.

[@X2yt]

Not gonna lie, this is probably the coolest non-electrical way of water delivery I've ever seen. Placing this pump in a river to be powered by water flow is completely ingenious.

[@fransche]

Hi Steve, I did one pump using the same principle that this one uses, but in a cylindrical (slightly conical) configuration with a propeller in front to generate the rotation using the river's cinetical energy. The advantage was that each turn had the same diameter, preventing the water to go backwards in the smaller turns. Another advantage was that the pump wasn't fix to any structure, only by a cord to prevent it from going down the river, which gave it versatility in the face of changes in the level of the river. It was an interesting experience! Maybe you can try something like it next time!

[@SteveMould]

Oh nice! Sounds like an interesting setup

[@MisterBones2910]

It's interesting to me that the error regarding airlocking you mentioned at the beginning is something that is probably common for a lot of older people but people who grew up playing videogames with (realistic, not always the case) liquid physics simulation understand it intuitively, likely having used it to their advantage many times.

[@ryanhass8716]

The videos of yours that I've seen have been interesting, informative, and quite laid back. You look to put a lot of effort into your videos and you have a calming voice. Good stuff, sir.

[@5thearth]

The version that spirals all the way to the center might actually work as a crude air compressor--the water can't compress which causes issues due to the diminishing available volume, but I bet the air bubbles that end up in the center will be slightly pressurized for the same reason.

[@stevensaunders1502]

Great video Steve as always, demostrating the multipling effect of air fluidity in a sealed system, created by the air lock and water. As a mechanic this is something we try hard to avoid in cooling systems and Brake/ clutch systems as the air is compressable and leads the poor clutch and brakes or overheating. interesting to see it working in a positive way! As a mechanic there is something that is part of my daily work routine that has always confused me and would love to see you make a video explaining what is going on. I inflate car tyres to a given pressure while it is suspended off the ground and yet when I put it down and the weight of the car is pushing on those tyres, the pressure remains the same? Surly the 1 ton or so pressure of the car should increase the pressure in the tyre, yet it doesn't! why?

[@sibbert1]

Apologies, just commenting because I'd also like to know the answer to this

[@ratykat]

Well now I need to know too! I wonder if it's because although there's extra weight, you're not changing the actual volume of air inside?

[@fewwiggle]

I think this 'analogy' works as a pretty good approximation of what is going on: Let's call each tire a torus. Let's say the car weighs 4000lbs. So each tire supports 1000lbs. The surface area of the tire torus is about 1000 sq in That 1000lbs it is supporting is trying to burst that tire, and its force is spread over 1000sq inches -- so, each sq in is only feeling 1 psi (pound per square inch) extra pressure.

[@SimonASNG]

I think it probably does go up, just not much relative to the total pressure. But yes, it would be interesting to see it studied more closely.

[@bgugi]

I think @@fewwiggle pretty much has it. The pressure has to go up, but it's only going to be proportional to the "smoosh" on the bottom of the tire. When the bottom of the tire flattens out to support the load, it slightly compresses the total volume of air inside the tire. The absolute pressure will rise inversely with its new size... i.e. if you had a 30 psig (gauge pressure) tire and it compresses 2%, the new pressure would be 44.5 psia (absolute) / 0.98 = 45.9 psia, or a 1.4 psi increase. If you had a precise gauge, and could properly control for cooling and leakage, i bet you'd be able to see a difference.

[@dpearson80808]

This reminds me of when I tried to get water out of a great length of coiled 1 1/4” plastic pipe. It was difficult. But I just kept rotating the coiled pipe

[@AvarFeralfang]

I always wondered about pumping water with a water wheel. Thanks for the demo.

[@Alistr2001]

@SteveMould I remember getting to see you live from a maths / science talk in Manchester back when I was in high school. It must have been at least 7 or 8 years ago. I think you demonstrated the Mould effect with the beads. I'm glad I fond your channel after all this time.

[@cortx7]

Keep up the awesome content, Steve!

[@Erhannis]

It sorta looked like the river version had a thick tube in the river, leading to a thinner output tube. I wonder if that'd let you pump the water higher, and fix the problem where your air bubbles were escaping past the water in the vertical tube, compacting the load?

[@paulwilson2204]

Would love to see this vs a ram pump which similarly uses the power of the river to pump water to a higher level. The ram-pump is much smaller but I dont know if it's more efficient or effective.

[@rickcoona8368]

@paulwilson2204 That would depend upon the head pressure you can develop that feeds the ram pump if the elevation is say ten feet and you are using a 2 inch line (the Hight develops the pressure to run the ram) and the feed line is 3/4 of an inch (standard garden hose) once primed and running it will run 24/7-365 days a year with very little maintenance (clearing the intake screen)

[@Aj-po9dc]

Huh! I didn't know that air lock was cumulative. Thanks for teaching me something new! I work with water transfer and on the odd occasion, even with a diesel pump running, the source water wouldn't enter into the pump and be pumped to where it needed to go and I never knew why. This, I believe answers that question! The solution was always to remove the atmosphere from the water system, but this explains WHY!

[@vinniIainCook]

Hey Steve, I have a science question for you: I noticed, that when I make myself an Instant Coffee and stir it, the Sound of my plastic spoons banging into the ceramic cup rises in pitch over time. I noticed that it was lowest when I had just stirred and highest when there was No swirl at all. Maybe that ist interesting to you.

[@Beansswtf]

1:25 This could actually make a really cool project if the air/water is controlled by an Arduino or something. You could have different length 'pulses' with some lighting or something to create a really cool effect.

[@ComradeTiki]

If you have long tubing arranged into a space-filling curve on a horizontal surface, you could use timing of air/fluid to briefly display an image....... and then start pumping another image to displace the previous one.

[@UnbeltedSundew]

Wonder two things, I'm assuming the height that can be pumped up to is a determination purely of the amount of coils available. And two, why not run them in parallel, like a coil spring instead of a spiral. Then you could have a bunch of loops all of the same diameters perfoming their function at full capacity so to speak.

[@chaos.corner]

That sounds like you're describing an Archimedes screw.

[@ameunier41]

The way I understand, you should able to pump at a height of Number of coil x diameter

[@carloshenriquezimmer7543]

@@ameunier41 actually no, there is the limit of air's compressibility. Once it is reached the airlock is broken and it behaves almost as if the tube was completelly full of water, so it stops working. The specific value of possible heigth can vary according to the diameter of the outlet tube, the circunference of the spiral, the ratio of reduction, the diameter of the spiral's tube, and so on. It is one of those cases of "try it and see if it works", it is easyer than all the math. But it does not seems to be that much elevation, given that the whole setup in the video strugled to lift water just 8 meters (26 feet) above the creek.

[@JTrillo]

It'd be interesting to take the transparent maze and run smoke through it by using air pressure to find the correct path, although it might be difficult to make it air tight? I'd imagine the air wouldn't travel down any of the incorrect paths because there wouldn't be a significant weight difference like there is with water.

[@dntfrthreapr]

attach a thread to a tiny bead of styrofoam and see if you could blow a thread through the maze!

[@JTrillo]

@@dntfrthreapr Ooooh.

[@FokkerBoombass]

Using this principle is how you can effectively drain a length of garden hose if you have it on one of those crank-reel-caddy things. Instead of laying it all out and lifting as you walk along it like a common peasant, you just reel it all in. Then you secure the loose end by tucking it in and then continue to crank the reel in the opposite direction (as if trying to unreel the hose). All the water inside will be forced to flow out of the inlet connection. It's kinda fun!

[@grekygrek]

I wish i could relay how much I appreciate your content Steve.

[@512TheWolf512]

why did you feel the need to use a tub of blood for your demonstration?

[@Defektyd]

It's now a tax write-off.

[@monhi64]

Honestly I’m kind of impressed you made the original maze with a ridiculously tall tank, exactly as tall as the maze was itself. Meaning even the worst case air lock scenarios the maze should be solvable every time as long as you fully filled the tank. So somewhere you must’ve had an intuition that you would need a lot of pressure even if you didn’t notice the air lock situation. A majority of people would probably get stuck and not figure out what went wrong because their tank wasn’t tall enough at all, cuz why would you need a tank that tall unless for something like air lock

[@bene5431]

No. If the maze goes up and down enough it's just like 2:22

[@monhi64]

@@bene5431 that moment is exactly where he demonstrates the importance of the inlet water pressure? Aka the height of the tank. If he didn’t build the tank on top like that it wouldn’t have generated enough pressure. I don’t understand what you’re trying to point out and I think you misunderstood me

[@stessy]

Could it be made so instead of the coils spiralling inwards towards the centre, they helix along the z axis making all the coils exactly the same circumference? Would it make any difference?

[@zutaca2825]

It should still work, but with the downside of not being as compact

[@pocarski]

I reckon you've just invented the Archimedes screw

[@kray3883]

​@@zutaca2825Combining the two seems to create greatest space efficiency if you have a large number of coils...like winding a spool of thread. You could possibly even reduce the outer diameter while keeping the same pressure by multiplying the number of coils.

[@landsgevaer]

The pressure builds up from one winding to the next, compressing the air, so the volume of the windings actually needs to gradually decrease a bit...

[@chaos.corner]

@@landsgevaerI'm wondering how a conical spiral would do. Though I don't think it gains you much. You would be able to have the top or the bottom parallel with the surface if that counts for anything.