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Why don't we make [more] use of water wheels?

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coppice:

--- Quote from: soldar on April 08, 2024, 12:48:13 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on April 08, 2024, 12:34:33 pm ---
--- Quote from: soldar on April 08, 2024, 12:23:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on April 08, 2024, 11:53:35 am ---How is a turbine not a high performance water wheel?
--- End quote ---
In the same way that a horse is not a high performance dog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_wheel

--- End quote ---
Er, look at the first image of the types of water wheel on that page. Its a turbine.

--- End quote ---
This thread started stupid and it has not improved one bit.

I think the difference is quite clear. It is quite clear for Wikipedia and I think it is quite clear for engineers. If you want to argue semantics you can argue all you want but I will not be participating.  You can argue a jet engine is an internal combustion engine.

The water wheel is an ancient invention across different cultures of the ancient world. They did not have water turbines which are a 19th century invention of the Industrial Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_turbine

It seems to me the world can tell them apart. If you can't I don't think I can help you.

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It seems Wikipedia authors can't really tell the difference. That page starts by saying the turbine was a 19th century invention, and lower down describes Roman turbine systems from the 4th century. Paddle wheels and turbines have never existed in isolation. You can find numerous medieval hybrids between a simple paddle wheels, cupped paddle wheels, turbines, and turbines that head a little back towards the cupped paddle wheel, using more cup like blades on the turbine. What the 19th century brought to the table was the performance benefits of sculpted, airfoil like, blades, probably adapted from the rapid development of propellers as steam powered ships took off.

pcprogrammer:

--- Quote from: soldar on April 08, 2024, 12:48:13 pm ---This thread started stupid and it has not improved one bit.

--- End quote ---

It was restarted by a talking horse, so what do you expect  :-DD

soldar:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on April 08, 2024, 03:40:53 pm ---It was restarted by a talking horse, so what do you expect  :-DD
--- End quote ---
I remember Mr Ed from my childhood. I grew up with Petticoat Junction, Perry Mason, Bonanza, etc. Good times.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: coppice on April 08, 2024, 11:53:35 am ---How is a turbine not a high performance water wheel?
--- End quote ---
It is common to distinguish them by the direction of the flow compared to the axis of the rotating part, so that for a wheel, the flow is tangential to the rotating part; for turbines, either parallel to the axis (standard) or radial to the axis (centrifugal).

I have no opinion whether this is correct or not, however.  I thought it was commonly accepted (especially in engineering involving such devices), but I can find no support for such definition in English dictionaries.  To me, it is a logical definition; and I see no useful reason to lump all into a single category where multiple labels can be used interchangeably, when such a simple and intuitive distinction is available.

IanB:
The engineering definition of a turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of a fluid to rotational motion. This would mean that many kinds of waterwheel would qualify as a kind of turbine, especially the ones with paddles pushed round by a flowing stream.

However, some waterwheels utilize the potential energy of the water due to gravity, where water flows at the top into buckets, falls down using its weight to turn the wheel, and empties out at the bottom allowing the empty buckets to rise up the other side to repeat the cycle. This kind of water wheel is not exactly a turbine according to the strict definition of the term.

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