Challenge: Wind-power water pump

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I liked the coffee grinder show, but was puzzling over other, more realistic uses of wind power. My only concern is that in the coffee challenge, both teams seemed to have the usual difficulty finishing in time. But the producers have to have something to worry about, so here is my latest modest contriubtion to JYWology.

Build a wind-powered water pump that must lift 55 gallons (some amount, less? more?) of water from a pond (swimming pool? lake?) into a 6-foot-high (2 meters) producer-provided device that drops a flag (rings a bell, sets off an explosion, douses Cathy with its contents, drops George in another tank of water) when it is full. First team to make the machine trigger is the winner.

Keep the lift height low so the pump could be a simple cylinder-and-piston-with-flap type, an Archimedes screw, or even some Rube Goldberg-like bucket-brigade-on-a-chain type thing.

If the combination of wind power and water pump is too time-consuming, just require it to be human-powered. This is to avoid repeating the motorized pump strategies of the fire boat episode.

Once again, apologies if this is derivative of some other suggestion. There are over 2000 posts now. It's getting hard to keep track...

-- Rick Tyler (rick@raf.com), January 17, 2001

Answers

damn rick!........i just had that same thought today, at work!....it would be a very doable sort of challenge, the only variable would be the availibity of the wind!

-- tim (milehiharley@hotmail.com), January 19, 2001.

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