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It’s been a while since I last visited Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs). Besides a splendid new parking garage (which I will write about in the next post), shopping area/marketplace, and Legoland area, I came across a working Archimedes Screw not far from the D-Luxe Burger (where I had my lunch), below:

What a pleasant surprise it was to find this machine historically used for transferring water from a low-lying body of water into irrigation ditches. Water is pumped by turning a screw-shaped surface inside a pipe.

The screw pump is commonly attributed to Archimedes on the occasion of his visit to Egypt. This tradition may reflect only that the apparatus was unknown to the Greeks before Hellenistic times and was introduced in Archimedes’s lifetime by unknown Greek engineers. Some writers have suggested the device may have been in use in Assyria some 350 years earlier.

The Archimedes screw consists of a screw (a helical surface surrounding a central cylindrical shaft) inside a hollow pipe. The screw is turned usually by a windmill or by manual labor or by cattle (in this case, two young ladies are successful in collaborating in accomplishing their goal of transporting the water).

As the shaft turns, the bottom end scoops up a volume of water. This water is then pushed up the tube by the rotating helicoid until finally it pours out from the top of the tube. The contact surface between the screw and the pipe does not need to be perfectly watertight, as long as the amount of water being scooped with each turn is large compared to the amount of water leaking out of each section of the screw per turn. If water from one section leaks into the next lower one, it will be transferred upwards by the next segment of the screw.

In some designs, the screw is fused to the casing and they both rotate together, instead of the screw turning within a stationary casing. A screw could be sealed with pitch resin or other adhesive to its casing, or cast as a single piece in bronze. Some researchers have postulated this as being the device used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Depictions of Greek and Roman water screws show them being powered by a human treading on the outer casing to turn the entire apparatus as one piece, which would require that the casing be rigidly attached to the screw.

The screw was used predominately for the transport of water to irrigation systems and for draining water out of mines or other areas of low-lying water. It was used for draining land that was underneath the sea in the Netherlands and other places in the creation of polders. Archimedes screws are used in sewage treatment plants because they cope well with varying rates of flow and with suspended solids. An auger in a snow blower or grain elevator is essentially an Archimedes screw. Many forms of axial flow pump basically contain an Archimedes’ screw. The principle is also found in pescalators, which are Archimedes screws designed to lift fish safely from ponds and transport them to another location. This technology is used primarily at fish hatcheries, where it is desirable to minimize the physical handling of fish.

An Archimedes screw was used in the successful 2001 stabilization of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Small amounts of subsoil saturated by groundwater were removed from far below the north side of the Tower, and the weight of the tower itself corrected the lean.

Archimedes screws are also used in chocolate fountains.

After having lived in Central Florida for a decade, Disney still continues to surprise/amaze/entertain me with its various educational interactive amusements.

 

Any comments, suggestions, concerns regarding this post will be welcomed at info.WindermereSun@gmail.com

Photographed, gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker
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