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by vintagedave
134 days ago
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> and the same power it would take to boil eight kettles. Newspaper-style units, but laughter aside, I tried to do the math. If a kettle is rated at 2.5kW, then five minutes of usage (to boil a kettle, or for eight of them do a turn of the bridge) is 2.5kWh * (5/60) * 8 = 1.6kW. My Nissan Leaf stores about 24kWh. So it's about 7% of a Leaf's battery to turn the wheel, or 10km of range. Given mass, perhaps it is finely balanced, and that seems more reasonable than I expected. I am not an electricity expert and will get things mixed up ;) |
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Not only is it balanced, because the boats displace water when they enter, if one side has a boat and the other doesn't, it still balances.
Practical Engineering YouTube did a video "the hidden engineering behind the Falkirk wheel" two months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6ZOVbKQhY