Archimedes in action

Following yet more disruption to my internet connection I am grabbing a window when it is working also as the family are out for the afternoon visiting friends .

Last week we took the children to see the Falkirk Wheel in action. For those of you who haven't heard of it, this is a unique engineering feat successfully designed to link the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal, which lies 35m (115ft) below. Historically the two had been joined at Falkirk by a flight of 11 locks that stepped down across a distance of 1.5km, but these were dismantled in 1933, breaking the link.

As you look at the blip you can see that the Falkirk Wheel lies at the end of a reinforced concrete aqueduct where the canal literally ends in mid air, high above the water below. Boats entering the Wheel's upper gondola are lowered, along with the water that they float in, to the basin below. At the same time, an equal weight rises up, lifted in the other gondola, which may or may not carry another boat. Those scientific boffins among you will understand that this cunning device works very efficiently on the Archimedes principle of displacement. That is, the mass of the boat sailing into the gondola will displace an exactly proportional volume of water so that the final combination of 'boat plus water' balances the original total mass. The result is a perfectly balanced structure that is The Falkirk Wheel - the world's first and possibly only rotating boat lift, and one which requires very little energy to operate. Also, here is an Olympic linked fact - the gondolas between them hold enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool!

Original ideas and concepts in the initial planning stage were numerous, and varied from rolling eggs to tilting tanks, giant see-saw to overhead monorails and included some complex counterbalanced structures. The final unique shape of the structure is claimed to have been inspired by various sources, both manmade and natural, such as a Celtic double headed spear, a vast turning propeller of a Clydebank built ship ,the ribcage of a whale or the spine of a fish.

The wheel was opened in 2002 and since then various other activities have been introduced to the site, notably a well designed aqua complex which aims at teaching anyone from the age of 2yrs upwards how water works. There are numerous working displays of locks, water pumps and fountains, to name but a few, all of which can be operated by youngsters. My three grandsons absolutely loved it, each getting something different from it although the one thing in common was that they all became very wet in the process! Luckily it was warm and sunny that day!

It was a really great day out and I recommend it to anyone in the area. We didn't go on the wheel in a boat - one of which you can see at the left of the picture (another is in the gondola up near the top canal) - but will certainly do so next time. We did, however, watch with ice creams in hand while a few narrow boats made the effortless transition between the two canals.