I rely upon my well to supply all my non potable domestic water. Various electronic control units have failed quickly so I try to engineer a novel solution. (It doesn´t work, though). Here´s a brief exposition of the way I think I went wrong. Water cannot be compressed, but it can be placed under pressure. In a sealed environment with no elasticity in the walls, you only need to bleed off a tiny volume of water to drop the pressure, even in a huge vessel, enormously. I know this because I used to build and pressure test pipelines, 300mm bore and in sections up to a kilometre long, with a hand-pump with a fish tank sized reservoir. If there were no leaks, less than 100 ml of water would send the pressure in that enormous volume rocketing. If I had had a rubber balloon involved, what would´ve happened as I began to frantically crank my little handle? The level in the fish tank would decrease rapidly at first, though we wouldn´t see a pressure increase of any note as the balloon would be expanding. Once the balloon became constrained by the steel sphere, however, a further bout of frantic cranking would swiftly bring the pressure up. If we now run the same series of events in reverse order, my error becomes clear. As the balloon is currently jammed flat against the inside of the rigid steel sphere, any initial loss will immediately lead to a catastrophic pressure drop; so my balloon is irrelevant Clarifying comments welcome..

• published: 27 Jun 2012
• views: 237