On Sat, 30 Jan 2016 17:57:01 -0600, "Dean Hoffman"
wrote:
I saw it on the show World's Strangest on the Science Channel.
It replaces locks that took a whole day to move a boat from one level to
the next.
Not to argue with the Science Channel. No one on this ng would ever
argue with anyone, but did it say where it took a whole day to go up
one level?
I've been throught the old Panama Canal on a sailboat, and it only
took maybe 30 minutes for each lock. We used the same locks that the
big freighters used. I think there were 5 sets of locks, 3 up and 2
down or vice versa, and we left the Atlantic coast around noon and go
to the Pacific coast around 6 PM.
BTW, the Panama Canal uses no pumps. Water flows from the lake to
fill the locks, and from the locks to the river below or the ocean to
empty them.
I'd be surprised if they built the new canal to take more time than
the existing one. Even though the locks are bigger, making the water
supply bigger is easier than other stuff they have to do. (I don't
understand the drawing well enough to know if it's limited by the
water supply or not, but I would think so.)
The Suez Canal ony has one or two locks. It doesn't have to climb a
mountain range, only iirc adjust for the difference in water level
between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea/Indian Ocean.
There are other canals, the Potomac, the C & O, the Erie, and many
many other rivers were paralleled by canals that no longer work. The
St. Lawrence Seaway has locks.
The
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welland_Canal takes 11 hours between
Erie and Ontario. That would answer my question, but it uses 8
locks.
http://www.greatlakes-seaway.com/en/...map/index.html
If you zoom in at the Welland Canal, the satellite view gets dark, but
two or three levesl from closest it gets very visible again. You can
see how a highway goes under the canal!
It takes just a few minutes now.
The thing that got my attention was the inventor got the idea when
playing
with his daughter's toys.
Cool.
There's a diagram he http://preview.alturl.com/bwbg2
It doesn't take much power to turn it no matter the size of
the boats. The two gondolas will weight the same due to
a principle which name I forget.
It has its own website, YouTube videos etc.