American Reacts to The Falkirk Wheel - What is it? What's it for? And how did it come about?
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- American Guy Reacts to The Falkirk Wheel - What is it? What's it for? And how did it come about?
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Wow, you actually took me up on my suggestion, thanks!
Your welcome
@@ItsCharlieVest I'm from Belgium and we have 2 even more spectacular boat lifts than the Falkirk Wheel: the Inclined Plane of Ronquières (ua-cam.com/video/DqFdkRFqfMU/v-deo.html) and Strépy-Thieu boat lift (ua-cam.com/video/wySQJ9hJQv8/v-deo.html).
Wel, thats a thing the dutch do not have.😂😂😂
@lorrefl7072 Yeah that is the main detail "Rotating Boat lift" while there is plenty of other boat lifts that are also mind blowing. I say this having lived and worked at the Falkirk wheel lol
He🎉🎉🎉😂😂😂
The "Imperial" system of Feet and Inches is British. We didn't adopt it! The US did.
We use a mishmash of both tbh. 😁🙄
Nope. The British use Imperial, where SI isn't more convenient (I use SI exclusively within engineering calculations, even where the source material is historical). The US uses an approximation to the older Winchester standard that Imperial replaced and rationalised in the 1820s. Their distance and weight standards were actually destroyed in a fire in the late 1700s and there was some debate about whether to obtain copies, or to take the opportunity to adopt the novel metric system that France had adopted in their revolution.
America missed the opportunity to commit to the conversion fully then, though for a long time they have used metric measures in many technical fields, and with their military ~ with a few exceptions. Aside from an expensive crater on Mars and some user interface stuff all of the NASA space stuff has been in SI. All the computing, all the planning, specification, manufacture.
A good day out at the Falkirk Wheel and you can see the Scottish Kelpies which are phenomenal.
I live very near the Wheel.and the Kelpies and often spend time there walking and on bikes. My USA visitors have all been amazed to go on this enormous boat lift. Like the Kelpies , it has to be seen to appreciate the scale.
The canal towpaths are used by everyone and are a big favourite with dog walkers. There are narrowboats and kayaks on the canals too but it’s still quiet and there’s lots of wildlife to enjoy as you walk along.
Especially at night when they are all lite up
11:04 The Falkirk Wheel is so efficient because it is perfectly balanced. When a boat enters, it displaces a volume of water equal to its own mass.
It is so well engineered that it only costs 10p per rotation plus it is so well balanced that it can be turned by hand
From a Bairn (born in Falkirk) Fun fact. Those horses are now declared Clydesdales. Even though they are not Clydesdale shaped. Kelpies are mythical water nymphs that lure people to their deaths. They are sometimes the white foam you see on waves. Not the most welcoming of our Scottish legends to be using to attract tourists 😆 So all the locals complained and they magically became the Clydesdales that pulled the boats along the canals. Which I’m pretty sure didn’t happen here either haha.
It would have been better to stick horns on their heads and call them Unicorns which is actually our national animal. Cause we are hilarious and we rock.
Where do you think the USA got miles feet and inches from? Britain didn't adopt the metric system till 1971 but not fully, we still use miles and pints, we measure wood in meters but the size of the wood is still in inches
It's astonishing how little Americans know about their beginnings.
In Sweden we adopted metric system 1878 and from 1889 it was the only legal system. but as UK was a big importer of our lumber we keept using inches for wood. I think they stoped that around 1970 even if you still used it when desribing the lenght of a nail or the dementions for contructual timber when in the 70s and 80s and may pop up sometimes even today.
@@ingegerdandersson6963sweden use to use swedish inches and feet, then swiched to imperial, then swich for metric inches quite soon after that to make it simpler to go over to metric units.
The size of the timber is pre cut metric inches. So that is why 2 inch lumber is 45mm. 2 metric inches is 50mm then 5mm is removed in cutting and planing.
@@101steel4 Perhaps better to have just said "It's astonishing how little Americans know".
1971 saw the decimalisation of the currency , widespread use of metric didn't happen until about 1976.
At 4:47 the canal goes over a river, it;s called an aqueduct. The "box" structure is an over flow for when there's too much water, the pipe below it leads to a plug hole so you can drain the canal if you have to repair it. Both drain into the river ( the Water of Leith) below.
A good day out is: visit the Kelpies, then the Falkirk wheel. From there walk through the woods to the almost 2000 year old Roman fort. This is part of a ditch and bank system, the Antonine Wall, they build right across the country, similar to the more famous Hadrian's Wall a bit to the south.
Falkirk is pronounced “Fallkirk”.
I'd have said fol-kirk
or Faw- kirk . My granny was born there.
@@auldfouter8661 yes and its named after the little church on the cow wynd road the Fa`kirk though for some reason they have stuck a placard outside the steeple church.
@@dantheman9228 Granny was born at Muirhouse Farm near the High Station in 1896. Her father was born at Standalane farm.
@@auldfouter8661 My Granny lived in Camelon and my father told us tales of when they were able to get on the barges travellng up and down the Clyde when lock 16 was a swing bridge,me i was raised in T-Hill in the 70`s in fact my family was one of the first in the village after the hurricane blew off the roofs of the houses in union road.
No. In the UK we still use miles for travel distances, & miles per hour for speed. We only use metric measures for small stuff. Even a slow journey by canal is less risky than the long dangerous passage around the stormy north coast of Scotland. But the idea for Lego was copied from an English inventers wooden brick building system that hadn't been patented when the Danes developed it.
We are still slightly confused by •F/•C haha
I had Better Builder when I was a kid in the 60s and I loved it.
The kelpies are the world's highest equine sculptures.They are massive
And bloody amazing...
Nope, the tallest equestrian statue is the Statue of Genghis Kahn in Ulaanbaatar Monglia at 40m.
@@RighAlban The statue of Genghis Khan is the tallest equestrian (rider on horseback) sculpture, the Kelpies are the tallest equine (horse) sculptures.
@@mizzymo64 Equine is pertaining the characteristic of a horse and having a rider is equine, so the statue of Genghis is both equine and equestrian, I mean since we're being pedantic and all.
You mean the tallest equine sculptures, they are actually quite low, not much above sea level.😃
You got imperial measurements from the same place you got the language 😉
The clue is in the name! The system was intended to standardise the weights and measures across the British Empire. Pity that they didn't opt for something more rational...
They don't use Imperial. The British developed that mensuration from scientific principles in the 1820s.
The US uses an approximation to the older "Winchester" system of mensuration that was based on a 'grain' system which had its roots in the Troy and Tower system of weights which had got so confused in statute and custom to be nearly unworkable when both were replaced for trade use by the subdivision of the wool-last the Avoirdupois pound which was a reasonable 'compromise' size when cast as 112lb cwt or 14 lb stones. (trade Troy 15oz was 7200 grain, the trade tower 15 oz pound was 6750 (though a 16 oz London trade lb Tower shared the same weight as the Troy 15oz weight... and both had (Troy still is) been used as Moneyers weight in a 12oz lb (5400 grains or 5760 grains (Troy)... but there was also a statute definition for tower weight still on the books which gave the weight as 7680 of a lighter tower grain... but gave the identical definitions for both pennyweights using identical language at 32 grains or as 24 grains... and the whole was also confused by whether things were measured by volume or by mass-balance and whether measures were heaped, struck, shaken and the shapes of the container...
The whole was a mess, far worse than I can summarise with any coherence... so the novel pound, which eventually (though likely not immediately) was settled at 7000 grains troy, was a much easier solution with one rule than the unpicking of centuries of 'making do'. Winchester measure defined the pound, the gallon of wine, gallon of ale and gallon of beer, as well as the bushel for dry goods. The US adopted it based on the wine gallon and the Bushel.
Imperial is based on the mass of a Gallon of distilled water at a particular temperature - 10lbs, and this makes the Imperial Gallon much larger than the Winchester/US Customary Gallon. The UK pint is 20 floz (imp), rather than the US pint, which is 16 floz (US) though the difference in size is lower than 5/4 because the US ounce is a bit larger.
The Imperial Gallon is closer to and between the old Ale and Beer gallons than the Wine gallon.
The Imperial ton is 20 cwt, or 2240lbs, the metric ton of 1000kg is ~2205lbs, and the US 'short ton' is a 2000lb short-weight.
Winchester mensuration was also adopted from his Britannic Majesty, but it is an older and more outdated system than Imperial, and far less practical than the System Internationale.
@@gracesprocket7340True that the US does not use proper Imperial. Which makes it even worse. They hate anything they did not invent.
@@gracesprocket7340last thing I read was that each US state had its own weights & measures, which is why the US is lagging so far behind the rest of the world, in having and using a cohesive unified system.
Eg soft drinks are sold in metric, but milk is imperial.
Arms & ammunition are all over the place.
US vehicle engines don't know or can't make their minds up whether they're cu or cc.
Best of all, here is the Act of Parliament which contains the system of weights and measures which came into effect on January 1, 1826 in England and Wales: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1824/74/pdfs/ukpga_18240074_en.pdf
The British use miles and feet and km and metres . Distances on road signs are in miles.
We are fairly universal.
UK road signs themselves, including the numbers, in miles or yards, on them, have been metric since 1968.
@@peckelhaze6934 Some might say indecisive
Yeh it’s a mess
Not really, everything is metric except:
Road distances are miles
Road speed limits are mph
Beer is served in pints
Milk is sold in metric amounts that are the same size as pints.
An overpass filled with water in the air is called an 'Aqueduct' and was created by the Romans over 2500 years ago, it is nothing new and they are all over Europe. Archimedes was alive well over 2000 years ago and his principles of leverage and hydraulics are still used today. However I will admit that the Falkirk wheel is a beautiful creation based on old ideas.
Some years ago, when on our school trip to Scotland in 9th grade, we went to see this. Super cool to see in person. Plus also saw the Scottish kelpies.
Another canal height can be seen with the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Those canal designers came up with some wonderful designs. These days canals are mostly used for pleasure but in the early days gave much smoother passage than the old roads.
I can remember petrol being transported up river on tanker boats.
I live right there. When ever I go on holiday on the way back coming up the motorway (freeway) the Kelpies tower over it, they're always the sign I'm home again.
Great reaction lad 🏴
"This wheel is as efficient as _this many cups of tea"_
...
☕🧐🇬🇧
The little purple boat you see early in going up and down. Is the Jaggy Thistle, nice wee boat that is part of a charity. Had the chance to take it up and down the forth and clyde aswell as the Wheel and the Union canal and I mean in control of the boat with the Tiller.
The view either getting to the front of a boat going down it or being the one in control. The veiw is amazing from the top. It can feel like flying.
I've stood on that wheel as it moved down - incredible views. I was taking cadets along the canal to Grangemouth in a Gemini - a military semi-rigid inflatable boat with an outboard engine. We weren't allowed to carry anyone in such a small craft on the Wheel so my passengers took the footpath down the hill and I stood on the pavement beside the water in the Wheel gondola, holding the bow and stern ropes. It was magic.
If you walk up the path to the top of the Wheel, thereafter it's only a short walk to the remains of the Roman Wall built during the Emperor Antonine's reign (i.e., the Antonine Wall - a World Heritage site) that stretched from one end of the country to the other. Follow the sign (denoted by a Roman helmet) and you will see what remains of a Roman fort (today called "Rough Castle") and the Wall and ditches stretching off into the distance. You will also see "Lilia" - anti-personnel traps built by the Roman soldiers in the form of small pits which, back in the day, had a spike on the bottom. When you see the scale of the fortifications you have to wonder what kind of trouble the Romans were expecting.
I am from Scotland, Loch Lomond. My late partner was English and he was in awe, looking at the Wheel and also the Kelpies. Especially lit up at night time. the hole I think is an overflow. I also, had a narrow boat not in Scotland but in England. Fantastic time, put it on your bucket list.
You're from Loch Lomond???
@@williamwallace5857 Yes
@@mairiconnell6282 You live in a Loch?
@@mairiconnell6282 No you're not. Loch Lomond is a lake (a loch in Scotland) and therefore you can't be from a Lake....or Loch.
I live 20 minutes from the Wheel and have never been on it. I have to fix that! Thanks for sharing
Beauty, engineering, function, efficiency and art combined.
I rode the Falkirk Wheel last year and it was awesome. The guide on our boat was so informative, and funny, and one of the interesting things is that when you sail off from the top level you actually pass through Antonio's Roman Wall. I also visited the Kelpies which are magnificent. These two attractions should be a must for everyone visiting central Scotland.
The antonine wall
The Manchester Ship Canal is a story in itself! - how it's creation crashed the economy of the City of Liverpool & created a rivalry/dislike/hatred between the cities of Liverpool & Manchester!. Incidentally there are any number of UA-cam vloggers who document their time as canal narrowboat "live aboards"
"You can't take a day to climb all those locks!"
Oh yes they did!
We climbed the Grand Union, flight of about 15 locks.
Takes about 12 hours.
On our usual haunt around the Rochdale ring, in 7 days we'll climb about 120 locks.
Literally mountain climbing in a boat and i absolutely love it.
When we retire in about 30 years we're buying a boat and doing laps of the country till we die.
Some aqueducts have "paddles" that can be lifted to allow water to flow out. The Avon Aqueduct on the Union Canal, about 12 miles east of the Falkirk Wheel (which is the greatest in volume in the UK, but not by length) and the Almond aqueduct flow over the rivers Avon and Almond, respectively. Water levels in the canal and rivers can be managed by letting excess water from the canal flow into the rivers if and when needed.
I live 7 miles away from this structure and the kelpies. It's really cool. We enjoy a wee day out there. We also took a ride on the boats and were lifted up into the air. It is so gradual and easy that you don't even feel like you're being lifted up. Before you know it, you're at the top. It's worth a wee visit, a nice visitor centre, cafe and places to walk around it also plenty to do for the kids.
We used to have a house right next to the railway and the lock and canal basin for the wheel right behind our house, walked through the tunnel many times.
12:12 If you like the idea of canal boating (seemingly) up in the air, check out the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Wales. There was a draining/repair video on it not that long ago on UA-cam I think... where you got to see how it looked when emptied*. (*And I think your question about the mystery pipe at 4:33 is possibly also explained by draining... as it looks like the square bit is to keep a common level by controlling regular flooding/overspill... but the lower pipe may be for (the rare event of) when the bath plug is fully pulled!)
Where do you think imperial measurements came from? We created them... Until 1971 we used the imperial system - miles, lbs etc...
By the way rhe US pint and gallon is 20% smaller than the imperial equivalent. So you aren't doing it right...
Yes, unfortunately the US Americans are never taught that Imperial measurement is a British measurement system and that Metric is essentially a French measurement system.
This unfortunately is the same for many things. The US Americans believe in many cases that the world didn't exist before The USA. I'm not at all having a go at Americans as if they are never told or are misinformed its no wonder people don't know. 😊.
Pilgrim Fathers took a Measured Gallon of water with them from UK , but ran low on Water 1 of them was Drinking the water on Route, that's the Reason For a US gallon not being the Full 8 pts. it's 6.4 pts
@@douglastodd1947 That's a stupid made up story, why is the pint smaller too?
@@daveofyorkshire301 I read it somewhere round about 40 years ago. obvious if there's 8 pint in a gallon the water left was divided into 8 equal measures.
The "Water Filled Overpass" is called a viaduct. It is not one boat at a time for a 'staircase' of locks, several boats at a time use the locks, one per lock and there are passing points to allow ascending boats to pass those descending. Canals were designed to carry large heavy non-perishable loads such as coal, metal ores or stone etc. one horse could pull many tons on a canal. Lighter, perishable loads such as food would be carried by horse-drawn wagons on the primitive roads, but this was at a time when the road system was poor and of course no internal combustion engines. If there were no Lego, the lift would have been modelled in Meccano, a British construction toy.
If you want some more UK canal marvels, you could do worse than:
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (1000ft long, 126ft high aqueduct in North Wales - the stream in the sky) - opened in 1805
Caen Hill lock flight - 29 locks going up/down 237ft (including 16 in a straight line) on 2 miles of canal in southern England - opened in 1810
Standege Tunnel - 3.2 mile long tunnel 636 feet under the Pennine Hills in northern England - opened in 1811
Kirkintilloch aqueduct has the canal at the top, the (old) train line underneath and a river under that. It’s called the unique bridge, pretty cool.
I live near that aqueduct and cross it regularly. The rectangular drain is a sluice that discharges excess water after heavy rain. It actually carries the canal over another, natural watercourse - the Water of Leith - which is what the sluice drains into.
There used to be a wooden statue of Burke and Hare on the verge of the canal tow path to the Southeast of the aqueduct, but it rotted away and had to be removed.
Also - Charlie, _please_ - your pronunciation. It's "fall-kirk". As in, you had a church, but it fell over. A fallen kirk. Falkirk.
You should check out . : cruising the cut, Foxes afloat and many other youtubers who have visited falkirk and adventured our rivers and canals , dont forget my friends keep on chugging ( although not living on the canal anymore ) they still have some awesome content
Lorna Jane also
12:10 commenting on the feeling of passing over the aqueduct to the wheel itself - take a look at the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. There you can be sitting on the railing of a narrowboat and leaning just a few inches and looking straight down 138'. I've done both and they are both great in different ways.
"44 gates, you wouldn't want to do that on holiday"
And there's my wife and i choosing a canal boat holiday only if there's enough locks.
One day we're gonna do the greater oenine ring.
2 weeks, hundreds of miles and about 300 locks.
And a 3km tunnel.
Another disadvantage of locks is that they move a lot of water from the higher canal to the lower, possibly draining the higher canal in dry times. That's where this type of solution comes in. There are quite a number of examples of this type of solution throughout Europe ... The Falkirk Wheel is impressive though!
If you think about it, a lock with 12 steps can carry 11 barges at a time! It's like an elevator!
I spent most of my childhood around Thames, Reine, canal du midi, the Norfolk broads and many other waterways. Ive seen and worked my fair share of locks and i wish the standard was 11 at a time
plus sometimes more than one boat can fit in a lock.
There were local kids that would be paid a tiny sum to look after the canal boats for some boaters as it got up the locks and the boater would spend his time in the local pub.
If you draw an end view of the Falkirk wheel with the water cradles and cut it out and stick a pin in it and slowly turn it you will realise there is a hidden sophistication that isn't apparent when you watch the video of the lift. Secondly because of Archimedes discovery the upper and lower cradles are balanced automatically with no need to weigh the boat or boats being transferred to and from the upper and lower levels.
I have been twice. The first time it was getting work done so only saw it turning but the second time there was a bao that would take you on the boat lift, along to a a basin and back with commentary
The spout on the aqueduct will be for overflow and controlling the maximum height of the canal
Miles as a form of measuring distance dates back to the roman empire and comes from the latin for thousand. A thousand paces = one mile.
Lego was developed from a British design Kindercraff Lego acknowledge Kindercraff in the company history.
Dear Charlie, i do really love all your comment video's from the start of your channel.❤❤👍🙂
You have really improved on every front from video quality to commenting to video's at 200%!❤❤👍🙂
I also noticed in a lot of video's you have a doggy, and as you should know that a dog is man's best friend and part of that family.❤
Wel, i lost my doggy that used to watch you with me together.😢😢
Maybe i can support you when visiting the Netherlands, only do not know how to reach you!?
For now, all the best of regards from the Netherlands.👍👍❤️🙂
Back in the late 40`s early 50`s the Forth and Clyde canals were joined together from the Forth second basin to Port Downie just above lock 16 at Camelon,they cut them off and filled that section in as it was no longer needed and built the village of Tamfourhill in the 70`s,where the Falkirk Wheel is is actually a bit further up and was the reclamation work done after the open cast quarry hit an under ground stream and flooded so quick they never had time to get all the heavy machinery out ,it lay like that for years so much that a sandy beach appeared and became a local swimming area we called Costa da T-Hill when i was a young man lol
Actually being there and seeing the thing working is jaw-dropping, it is beautiful and defies the senses to watch. the park surrounding it has water puzzles and all kinds of cool stuff to entertain and inform, and as for the Kelpies ... you have to come and see...
I was born in 19436 and learnt all my work skills using the imperial system of measurement so much so that today in my mind I still use it I look at something and use feet and inches to estimate its size If someone asks my size I still say 5" 9" I still don't know my size in metric My weight I still use pounds and stones, not Kilos.
Also look for the Anderton boat lift ( not Scotland )
In schools the UK they switched to metric in 1963, all works being done in the metric system. However the rest of the country only could catch up as this generation moved into the work places. UK still has pints (drinks), miles (distances), and a few other measurements of the Imperial system. The Imperial system being a combination and refinement of other systems of Europe, middle east, and as far back as Rome, Greece and Egyptian units of volume, length, weight, time. This became very important in times of war when every one was working to the same standard for measures as the same items where made by differing manufacturers and need to fit each others product.
Hello from Falkirk, It was designed to open up the old canal system that links the east and west coasts, suddenly tourists started to go and see it for some reason, then more tourists went to see it, so they built a cafe and started little boat trips, which is what it sees most use from. It used to be 13 or so canal locks that took the boats up the hill, now its that. Saves many hours of travel. You can sail from the sea on the east coast, past the Kelpies, along there and out towards Galsgow on the west coast. It used to be just dirt tracks that horses made, they used to pull the barges along the canals before engines became a big thing Tow paths they were called. They've cleaned the place up and sorted all the pavements etc, its a good thing, a lot of folk fell in there and drowned, my cousin included. That guy makes good videos on Scotland, you should check out more of them, though the best way to find out about Scotland is to come and see for yourself!
An English comment. Near me in the West Midlands, at a place called Tardebigge ( pronounced tardy-big) is a flight of 30 locks! The Worcester & Birmingham Canal needed to get to the very important manufacturing hub of Birmingham, and it's on a plateau.
The Scots must advise us. I've got a feeling that the real locals pronounce their town faw-kirk. Am I right?
I loved the narrator's Scots accent.
There is a wonderful canal aqueduct at Pontcysyllte in north-east Wales, and there are UA-cam videos on it. (There are two 'y's. I'm not too good on this, but I would pronounce the 'y's as 'uh', and I'm afraid you have to do the proper Welsh 'll' sound.)
See my comment about Falkirk vs Fawkirk above, Jonathan. I'm a Falkirk Bairn by adoption, having moved here in 2015. I love the place and the folk. I volunteer with the Seagull Trust in summer; free canal trips for special needs, elderly, schools...we're up and doon the Falkirk Wheel almost every day!
I would say you were correct. I live here ( my husband is a ‘Bairn’ as he was born here - I’m from south of Glasgow)
I know what a yard, a foot and an inch were, but that's because I'm 79, not 19 or 29. We still use miles. The building trade still has to use very odd numbers because most buildings were constructed using imperial measurements. So we get a standard door size of 1981 x 838 mm. Modern buildings are, of course, built to sensible standard dimensions and that becomes 2000 x 850 or (preferably) 900.
There's a lesson how to pronounce "Falkirk" here, but you seem to ignore. The ancient form referred to the "Faw Kirk", the mottled looking church because it was constructed with a mixture of different recycled stone from earlier (mostly Roman) buildings.
I lived on a canal boat for 4 years. I think you would love the life dude.
there's a flight of 7 locks that I had to go through on a regular basis. it took 3 hours to get through on my 65' 20 ton boat and 20 minutes to walk back to get my car.
life is slow and free and if you don't like the view from where you've pulled up you just move your home somewhere else. i had everything i needed onboard...a shower, bath, toilet, gas oven & hob, LED lighting, fridge / freezer, TV and a lovely wood burner fire with an over built into it....great for baking your own bread.
sola panels on the roof charged up 3 big leisure batteries but i had a back-up generator.
i could gather dead wood from the side of the canal as i travelled and rarely had to buy any.
it was cosy and warm even when it was freezing outside. I loved it, but life got in the way and i had to sell it.
Somebody has never taken the canal up from the Severn up to Birmingham: 58 locks with a total rise of 428 ft. Plenty of holiday boaters do.
Staircase flights of locks are not bottlenecks because you have boats in each lock.
Takes each boat a day to climb, but you can have doxens of boats climbing.
As long as you have enough water at the top to go down to loft all the boats.
We got stuck on the Rochdale because some idiot had left the paddles open and drained the entire canal.
Which we had to refil.
One lock a time.
For 5 hours.
Until 2 am. 😫
Funniest thing about British Imperial and Metric use is how we sell fuel in Pence per Litre, however we measure fuel consumption in Miles per Gallon.
We go boating in Norfolk quite a lot and the tidal markers for judging what the clearance is under bridges has both Foot and Metre markings, the Broads are similar to the canals where they were used for transport of goods, only they're mostly rivers which were interconnected, with flooded medieval peat cutting pits that became accidental wildlife havens. In the mid 20th century you would still have large sea vessels going up the rivers all the way to Norwich.
And yeah, while we hold on to feet, yards, and miles, we get taught both systems in school and in mathematics and science we mostly go by metric cause that's what big industry would use for commonality with trading with the rest of the world and cooperating on research for chemistry, infrastructure, or medicines. There was an issue once with a NASA probe where the company doing some of the software forgot that NASA uses metric, and the calculations for orbiting a planet went way off and it just smashed into the surface instead.
We used to sell fuel ⛽ as so much per gallon. Its sold as per litre now just so the price doesn't " appear " extortionate, which of course, IT IS. Imagine advertising petrol at almost £8 per gallon!
@@richardcummins5465 We will soon be measuring our electricity usage in kilowatt-minute instead of kilowatt-hour😀
@@richardcummins5465I remember Roses Bitter at one shilling and three pence ( under 6 pence per pint )
Think water displacement principal - - think it was Archimedes.
It's about 15 miles from where I live, pretty popular attraction, and believe it or not to rotate it - it'll use about the same electricity as boiling a kettle of water
I don't have to imagine "being in a boat on top of that", I've been on the tour. They have tourist boats from the pool at the bottom that take you up to the top then about half a mile along the canal at the top which is mostly through a tunnel. Then there's a pool where they turn round and go back through the tunnel and down the wheel again. It's well worth the visit. Also the Kelpies are a great place to visit though the car park queues can be a bit meh.
the double spouts on the bridge, the big one will be the storm overflow for the loch as filling to the brim probably isnt best for the bridge, and the little one the drain for the tow path from the days of horse drawn river boats
The units miles, yards feet & inches are part of the imperial system, which were developed by the English.
I've been on the Falkirk Wheel. It was an amazing experience, such a clever structure.
i worked on The Wigan Flight for 10 years as a lock keeper it is a series of 21 locks that takes the canal a height of 214ft in less than 2 miles
the guy didnt make it clear.. the thing is super efficient because its perfectly(as near as) balanced at all times.. like a sea saw.. put a bucket either side of a sea saw fill them to the brim and the sea saw will be level.. drop a brick in one bucket the water will slosh out leaving the bucket the same weight so still level... ok not exactly the same as density is a factor here.. but in this device were interested in buoyancy and displacement.. so .... yeah
the UK uses both imperial and metric. same here in Hong Kong - plus we have our own weights used in fresh food markets. you'd think it would be confusing but apart from the British 'stones' which is I think 14lbs it's not too confusing!
If you want to hit that 100k mark , we need some BTS vlogging . You could choose only to react( thats your right), but some of us long term subbers want to see some more charlie and co. Take a bicycle and show us why america cant adopt cycling, a tour of your American car, or a video over your infrastructure compared to ours , we could collab in a video over a 24 hours of our life in our countries ?
When the UK joined the Common market in Europe the UK changed over to the metric system around 1975?
The cannals where use for transportation of goods and in about 1830 steam trains arrived on the scene and the saw the decline of the cannals for transporting of goods.
More than one boat can use a multi lock system at the same time.
Recommend Eddie Cheese he went a couple of weeks ago and watch him on it. Thank you for sharing ❤ too. I'm from UK and never heard of it till recently. It is incredible, imo. 👵🤔🇬🇧
In Uk we use both Imperial and metric.. inches and cm etc
I saw ot first on the tv about 2010 about lunchtime. I left 2 hours later, 410 miles and slept in my van. When i got to Falkirk It was as amazing in real life and i was disappointed with Machu Pichu. I went round twice, people ought to go, you'll all love it.
You should check out the Anderton Boat lift just outside Manchester built in 1882 and still in use today or check out the swing bridge which is a canal that goes over the Manchester Ship Canal and has to swing to allow ships to pass.
Second this. We have a narrowboat and I really enjoyed using the Anderton boat lift.
There are over 2000 miles of canal in the UK and my husband lived permanently on the canals for several years before we met.
He still spends more time on the boat than I do and goes back to it every few weeks for a few days or weeks.
A lovely way of life.
Please look at the Anderton boat lift built in 1875
in general the UK use both imperial and metric with older folk using them interchangeably, for the most part now down in England the younger kids are just taught metric. the EU almost only use metric.
The tiny amount of energy needed to operate the wheel derives from the Archimedes principle - the gondolas weigh exactly the same regardless of how many, if any, boats are in them.
I wonder if they could have an optional power source of an accumulator and capstan. They could ask for volunteers from the visitors to push the capstan as a way of getting more involvement from the crowd.
When the traffic through a flight of locks is properly organised, the flow rate is no different than that of a single lock. It is much longer for individual barges of course, but in its hey day dozens of barges would be travelling in either direction every day.
The 11 locks would allow 22 boats each way if each narrowboat took a full working day to traverse. Each lock has an associated wharf, and pond, and two narrowboats could fit in the lock at once. A full barge would occupy the full lock, so only 11 each way, or some combination.
A boat part way through the flight could overnight and continue in the morning.
This isn't *fast* but it is much faster and more sure than attempting to navigate a necessarily larger and more expensive vessel around the storm troubled coast of Scotland. A similar long-flight is still in operation at Devizes, with a more spread out set of locks on the approach to Bath on the Kennet and Avon (including the 'deep lock' formed from the combination of two existing ones during a road expansion program).
The main issue would be water used to fill the locks, and while pumps can move the water, if there are low levels it can hinder the operation of a large flight.
The cassion lock (which has also been used in a vertical lift, rather than this rotating version) was used on the now abandoned Somerset coal canal, among others), where a small amount of water is lifted with the boat in a water tight box is far more efficient and reduces the amount of water needed to feed the canal.
Im from Falkirk, the wheel is very good and the kelpies are braw.
I've been there, it's pretty amazing!
I've been on the falkirk wheel. I'm scared of heights so you can imagine how scared I was 😳 amazing though.
Boat lifts are not that uncommon. But rotera once are.
Also the one day is probobly time time with wait time. Dont take a day to go throw 11 lock. Also they are stacked and used in conjunktion. So for 11 lock you can actually have 6 ships in it at the same time. But all of them got to go in the same direction. What they do is typically schedial say 4 hours in one direction then swich it.
There would be a bottleneck but not as much as you would think.
Multiple boats can use a flight of locks, passing on both directions. With a boat using each lock while another, going the other way, waits in the pound. (the reservoir of water between locks)
The UK does use metric with a very British combination of half-heartedness and grocer slyness to produce a satisfying muddle.
Most people over about 40 still think of their weight in stones (14lb unit) and pounds, not just pounds. Most adults know their imperial weight even if they have set their bathroom scales to kg. Most domestic scales of every kind can be set to either.
Petrol (gas) is sold at the pump in litres, and Gen Z people may think in kilometers if they are flying somewhere. Yet people who grew up well after metrication (Gen X, millennials & Z) will still talk in miles driven in cars, and miles per hour.
Milk started to be sold maybe 10-15 years ago in litres and half litres but until recently marked as “1 litre (2.2 pints)”. That’s imperial, not US pints. Then, with Brexit, some producers started selling by the pint again at the same as the litre price: nostalgia used for shrinkflation.
Although raw groceries (meat, veg, grains etc) are sold in metric, until very recent shrinkflation, less perishable goods were still packaged in something like “legacy” quantities. Egg boxes only recently started to vary from the dozen/half dozen. Weird amounts like 4, 10, 20.
There are some cultural constants - like beer, still sold in undesecrated pints.
Sugar is an1kg bag, also labelled 2.2lb. This is also somehow sacred. Entire generations of Brits still can only conceptualise the kilogram as a bag of sugar. If they change the weight of sugar, everyone over about 45 will become dislocated and unhinged until they remember a litre of water also weighs a kilogram. But there will be no handy automatic household kilogram. A litre of milk does not weigh a kilogram, neither does a litre of juice. Not exactly.
But the very fact that goods are (parenthetically) labelled in decimal fractions of lbs and pints instead of ounces/fl oz is the giveaway that nobody truly thinks in proper imperial any more. Younger people are not even sure how many ounces are in an imperial pound (16) or what abbreviations like lb / oz are.
He's not telling you the half of it. It is constructed with steel and rivets to celebrate the country's historic ship building heritage. The steel counter balances are shaped as the ancient yin and yang to show interconnected balance. But the main contribution comes from the ancient Greek Archimedes and his Eureka moment. A body, in this case a boat, will always displace its own weight of water. So if you put a 5 ton boat in a gondola, it will push out 5 tons of water weighing eactly the same as it did before the boat entered. Why is this important....... because both gondolas will always weigh the same regardless of the size of the boats or even if there is no boat at all in one of them. They balance each other perfectly. So one gondola is coming down using gravity as the other goes up. So the only energy needed is to overcome friction which is why it is so efficient. Incidentally, we've been using imperial measurements since before the days of Christopher Columbus or the Pilgrim fathers. You didn't invent them.
Maybe you know that Americans did NOT invent the imperial system of weights and measures (or French fries, which aren't French at all).
Or the English language, which so many think. Even though it's called English and not American 😂
A few hundred years ago it was all miles and feet. If that photo was taken today it would be metric by default but both systems are still in use although metric is gradually becoming the norm.
Great Brittain went metric in 1965. So a lot of stuff before that time, is imperial. And the old system is still part of living memory, so it still gets used quite a bit in speech.
It's a little more than that. Roads are all imperial, speed limits are miles per hour, road sign distances are all miles and yards, milk and beer are in pints, McDonald's sell quarter pounders, we measure our height in feet etc etc
@@markj66 Ooh, that's actually new information for me. I just read up on that. I didn't realize the signage was still in miles. And replacing the signs would have been to expensive... Imagine how much more expensive it would be nowadays...
Oh yeah. That whole measures thing. We Brits have an annoying habit of using different systems of measurement for different things. Sometimes in the same sentence. Example, give me a pint of milk and litre of orange juice. The official British system of measurement is the Metric. But only since the early 1970s when we changed from Empirical. So some of us grow up learning one thing in school and then switched late in life. I know it's confusing but sometimes we put both on the packet.🤣
Hey Charlie, if you like this you also should go see the Schiffshebewerk in Niederfinow in Germany.
Operating locks only consumes the energy needed to open them , as in opening a door , the filling and emptying is done by gravity (water flow).
A device like the Falkirk Wheel could be designed to work in the same way if the designers wanted to take that path.
Unlike a conventional lock, if both gondolas are in use, no water is wasted by filling/emptying the chambers.
The UK used to use Imperial measurements.
Pounds, shillings and pence.
Miles,yards, feet and inches,
It all changed when decimalization came in, in the 70s after the UK joined the common market of Europe.
It was a big farce as you could still use Imperial measurements for sometime after the date of change over.
I've noticed that over the years that some measurements are reverting back, I and many more of my age group where lucky in that we were schooled in imperial and saw the change over at a young age and could go between the two types of measurements quite easily...
The other thing about the change, prices of some items went up in price quite subtly....
The UK joined the EC on 1st January 1973.
A gallon of petrol was 4s-11pence before we went metric within a few months it went up to 33pence. 3gallons to the pound instead of four, beer was 1s-9pence a pint, that went up to 13pence which was 2s-7pence in old money. That was the reason there were strikes in the seventies big pay rises were needed just to keep up with inflation.
The Anderton Boat Lift , Cheshire, England has been doing exactly the same job since Ulysses S Grant was your president
Every European country had its own version of "feet" and "inches", "pounds" and "ounces", some had several. They should have adopted a duodecimal system then we could easily split a bill between three people....
The UK has used miles since 1593 and still does.
Very interesting .good job .
We actually use both types of measurement, but doesn't the word, 'imperial', intrigue you...? It means, 'relating to an empire'. But wait - the USA ia a republic, right? So how come it uses a system of weights and measures that relate to an empire? Which empire has the US ever been connected to - or, even just some of it?? Yes, that's right, you're welcome...!!!
"Without Denmark" is not correct: Ole Kirk Christiansen who is founder of Lego stole the idea of the bricks from Hilary page and his company Kiddiecraft and he was a Brit ...
In a themepark it is called a Top Spin.