Scots Use Unusual Boat Elevator to Lift 500 Tons

Going up...

Moving boats from one canal to another.

Some canny Scots have devised a way to move boats and the water they sit in from one canal to another using the principles of an ancient Greek.

Tom Scott narrates a video explaining the basic physics behind the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift in not-so-sunny Scotland. It enables boats to travel between two canals, one of which runs 80 feet higher than the other, Chris Mills reports on gizmodo.com.

To do that, it has to lift entire canal boats — themselves often 60 feet long, Mills wrote.

The design uses two ‘cassions’ — water-filled pods that the boats sit in — on either end of an arm, centered around a main wheel. The cassions counterbalance each other perfectly: they are filled with 500 tons of water, and when a boat enters, it displaces the same amount of water as it weighs (thanks, Archimedes). So, both arms are always perfectly balanced, which drastically reduces the amount of energy it takes to lift a boat through the air

For more about this innovation, including a video showing how it works:  http://gizmodo.com/how-a-giant-lift-harnesses-gravity-to-move-boats-1734185394?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow