D-engine of the Claymills Pumping Station. (Credit: John M) Although infrastructure like a 19th-century pumping station generally tends to be quietly decommissioned and demolished, sometimes you get enough people looking at such an object and wondering whether maybe it’d be worth preserving. Such was the case with the Claymills Pumping Station in Staffordshire, England. After […]
Imagine you have a natural stream running through a low-lying area on your farm. It’s a great source of fresh water, only you really need it to irrigate some crops sitting at a higher elevation. The area is quite remote from fixed utilities, complicating the problem. Your first thought might be to grab a commercial […]
Have you heard of the Sprengel pump? It’s how they drew hard vacuum back before mechanical pumps were perfected — the first light bulbs had their vacuums drawn with Sprengel pumps, for example. It worked by using droplets of a particular liquid to catch air particles, and push them out a narrow tube, thereby slowly […]
From space, the most striking feature of our Pale Blue Dot is exactly what makes it blue: all that water. About three-quarters of the globe is covered with liquid water, and our atmosphere is a thick gaseous soup laden with water vapor. Almost everywhere you look there’s water, and even where there’s no obvious surface […]
Fiddle around with cars long enough and you’ll realize two things: first, anything beyond the simplest repairs will probably require some kind of specialized tool, and second, those tools can be prohibitively expensive. That doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, though, especially if you’ve got scrap galore and a DIY spirit, as this junk bin […]
Imagine a tub overflowing with bubble bath, except it’s a club dancefloor and music is pumping all night. This is what is known as a “foam party” — a wild and exciting concept that nonetheless many are yet to experience. The concept exploded in popularity in Ibiza in the 1990s, and foam parties are regularly […]
Rub two pieces of metal against each other hard enough, and it won’t be long before they heat up sufficiently to cause problems. That’s especially true when one is a workpiece and one is a tool edge, and the problems that arise from failing to manage the heat produced by friction can cost you dearly. […]