Subject: what is it?
From: (rick fetters)
Date: 07/08/03 07:05 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:

At this site you will find a picture of a focault pendulum clock that
has a cone shaped piece of metal from a hydroelectric generating
station. nThe metal is 'said' to be really hard, but it has been
abraded/contorted into a very interesting shape. The question
is....what part is it, what was it's function? It is interesting to
note that the very tip shows little deformation/abrasion; could it be
the 'end' instead of the 'point' of an apparatus in the flow of water?
rick

It looks like the needle valve in the float chamber of a carburetor so I
suspect it performed the same function in a restricting valve in a pipeline.
The deformation will have taken place primarily in the seating area below the
tip where the fluid velocity is highest. Bernoulli would have us believe the
pressure falls as the velocity increases so I suspect that at high flow rates
the fluid was cavitating there leading to the interesting shapes worn into the
metal.


Dave Baker - Puma Race Engines (www.pumaracing.co.uk)
I'm not at all sure why women like men. We're argumentative, childish,
unsociable and extremely unappealing naked. I'm quite grateful they do though.