Sunday, February 26, 2006

Falkirk Wheel

Sometimes politicians manage to start something that really does inspire people. In the case of the Falkirk Wheel, a competition to find a replacement for a series of old canal locks, led to the wonderful piece of engineering shown below (image courtesy of Wikimedia):



The beautiful thing is the wheel is so well balanced that the energy it takes to swing it around is very small:
It takes just 22.5 kilowatts (kW) to power the electric motors, which consume just 1.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy in four minutes, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water.


Wikipedia's article has more photos of the structure.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:04 am

    I went to see this the last time I visited Scotland. It was amazing.

    I also played the Old Course at St Andrews, and visited a few distilleries. :-)

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  2. BeRKA,

    Good for you, whisky's not my favourite drink, but golf would have been fun. I was kicking myself a while ago because I visited Stockholm last year and I should have looked you up!

    Congrats on the hockey win in Torino!

    Angus

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