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This spiral pump uses air lock to push water to great hights.

Here’s Johnathan Deane’s paper on the subject: https://openresearch.surrey.ac.uk/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/A-hydrostatic-model-of-the-Wirtz/99515507702346

Here’s my water solving mazes video: https://youtu.be/81ebWToAnvA

Additional filming by Geronimo James

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48 Comments

  1. Jonathan (from the video) wanted to answer a recuring question from the comments. Adding it to the pinned comment seemed to be the best approach. Here's Jonathan:

    Several comments ask: why not replace the spiral by wrapping the pipe round a cylinder instead? Some suggest this might actually be better than a spiral, but this isn't true.

    To see why, you first need to remember that air is much more compressible than water. Second, remember that, however the pipe is arranged, inside it are 'plugs' of water alternating with plugs of air. The first plug of air after the open end is under low pressure. The second is under higher pressure and so on. The innermost plug is under the highest pressure of all.

    As the air pressure increases, the volume of the plug decreases (this is Boyle's law).

    To maximise the pressure, ideally the plugs of water should be arranged like a set of left-hand brackets (((. Now, the circumference of the spiral decreases as we go towards the centre, and this fact helps to maintain the arrangement of plugs of water as the plugs of air shrink. The shrinking circumference makes up for the shrinking air plug length.

    End of Jonathan.

    That said, cylindrical pumps have been built and they work fine – they're just not optimal.
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  2. meu encanamento nao descia agua de jeito nenhuma depois que entrou ar por causa desse efeito, podia abrir totalmente a torneira q algumas só saiam alguns pingo e outras não saia absolutamente nd. Resolvi com um aspirador a prova dágua literalmente sugando ar da tubulação com ele 🙂

  3. Thanks for the clear explanation, I have a gravity feed water system to feed 3 troughs for some cattle, every now and then it stops working and it is an airlock situation , I have put a tap in the air loop so I can bleed off the air and then it starts flowing again 🙂

  4. Your pump seems to show a lot of surface tension, i bet if your pump volume was larger(wider), it would behave a bit more like we’d expect.

  5. I didn't understand what the difference is between a tube light that is too small, another that is within the optical range, and a third that exceeds it. I also did not understand what it is, what is defined, as "that the pump does not work", what it is, "that it does." That is, I just understood that surface tension operates against very small holes, increasing air bubbles or "internal air pressure." I also understood that there is a "maximum height ceiling." Finally, the concept of "sum of internal air bubbles or internal air pressures" became clear to me. But about this damn WIRTZ bomb, I understood ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, beyond the purely intuitive, that I would have grasped the same thing without seeing this abstruse video. I had SUBSCRIBED but I canceled my subscription and blocked this channel, so that YouTube will never show it to me again. I must be very stupid, I guess.

  6. make something interesting use your contacts to get a tuning fork made out of pzeio-electric cermaic/material and then resonate it at the freq you made it at and see what happens

  7. what if you used a diameter reduction as you move toward the center of the unit? i.e. large diameter at the outside of the spiral, narrowing as the radius diminishes…..
    Please educate the blond.

  8. I guess, it might help understanding the details, to have pressure gauges in several places of both cases (the maze and the spiral).
    I wonder, which parameters end up in the spirals efficiency and capability: overall diameter, diameter of the hose (depending on the surface tension of the fluid), number and distribution (evenly of decreasingly to the center) of the spiral "stages" + how deep the spiral/outer inlet dives beyond the water source leve -> resulting ratio of air in the outmost spiral part + atmospheric pressuces –>compressibility of the air (depending on the places height beyond sea level) ???

  9. Thanks! Great video as always! I humbly request, if convenient, that you update the maze video description with a correction regarding the reason for the liquid not fully draining.

  10. The limitation to this type of pump is the back pressure. The driving force is the air gap and gravity, but the outlet can only get so high before the water pushes back into the pump.

  11. I would think it would actually be higher than the 3 combined because the air between them is a gas and gasses are compressible which means the air columns between them aren't moving 1:1 like the fluid is. Its also partially compressing and with more water pressure they're also compressing more.

  12. so so Lufteinschluesse sind der Grund….. also doch die Oberflaechenspannung zwischen Luft und Wasser. Aber das ist doch voellig egal denn es funktioniert einfach. Der Wirkungsgrad im Vergleich zu anderen Pumpen waer das einzig interessante. Am Ende wieder Werbung fuer Antispamfirmen

  13. Y por eso hay que mantener los frenos del coche y la moto purgados, y por eso también hay que purgar el refrigerante de tu motor o quemarás tu vehículo por lo que llamamos "trampas de aire".

  14. Wow thats so weird (but also cool) to see. Jonathtan was my classical dynamics lecturer a few years ago when I was in uni. He did good for his students which was much appreciated and its great to see he is still passionate about his field!

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