Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there this
Speaker 1: stuff you should know? What was that? That was? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know a little extra something on top.
Speaker 1: I guess little hot sauce. Yeah to Lula. Uh So,
Speaker 1: we just got back from our wonderful tour of the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom in Ireland and it could not have gone better.
Speaker 1: And you may be hearing more about this in the future,
Speaker 1: or we may never speak of it again. That's true too.
Speaker 1: Oh before we go though, um, before we go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still we're just starting out. Before we get started. Um,
Speaker 1: I started my own little personal Chuck Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant Facebook page as a public figure. Yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: one of those two you do. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's largely neglected. I should probably pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: Huh So basically, you say, I have a haunted ghost
Speaker 1: house that I feel free to walk by it right now,
Speaker 1: and my house is populated by me, and uh go
Speaker 1: like the page and I'm gonna be sharing a little
Speaker 1: more personal stuff like my opinion on things and sharing music.
Speaker 1: I like photos of your bare knees, photos of my knees,
Speaker 1: photos of my animals, just a little more stuff like
Speaker 1: that because I get yelled at now when I do
Speaker 1: anything semi personal stuff. You should know page. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I'll go and have in mind too. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you want a piece of me as gross as
Speaker 1: that sound, look for Charles W. Chuck Bryan on Facebook
Speaker 1: and uh, it's gonna be a party, it is. That's
Speaker 1: the logo. Um, I do I neglect my Facebook page,
Speaker 1: but I am fairly active on Twitter. Twitter thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Josh underscore, um underscore Clark, of course it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that. I do the same thing on that though.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm a little more opinionated and share more
Speaker 1: personal stuff. We're a lot of real human beings exactly.
Speaker 1: We don't have to be brand ambassadors. We can take
Speaker 1: our sashes off, all right. So that's all for announcements
Speaker 1: for me. So, Chuck, have you ever encountered water? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So you know that there's three states of matter, and
Speaker 1: water is a great demo of these different states, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I encounter every morning when I washed my horse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you should share pictures of you washing your horse
Speaker 1: on your Facebook page. Um, what's your horse's name? Uh
Speaker 1: ganho ganev nice man. There's just a few hundred people
Speaker 1: who know what you're talking about. Um. So when you're
Speaker 1: washing gancho and that nice water is like coming down
Speaker 1: all over his horsey body, it is in its liquid state, right,
Speaker 1: And when it's in its liquid liquid state, it's density
Speaker 1: is different than when it's in its solid state. It's
Speaker 1: more dense in its solid state. E g. Ice r
Speaker 1: I E ice. Sorry, But then if you really heated
Speaker 1: it up and turn it into steam, it would turn
Speaker 1: into water vapor, right, yes, Then then it's in its
Speaker 1: gaseous state and it's less dense. Those molecules could not
Speaker 1: get further apart. They probably could. So while it's density
Speaker 1: is smaller and ice, it actually takes up less space, right,
Speaker 1: It's correct. So if you put that water in a
Speaker 1: space and you froze it, it would shrink inside the space.
Speaker 1: If you expanded it into water vapor, it would take
Speaker 1: up more space. And as it takes up more and
Speaker 1: more space, it's pressure increases. That's right. And if you
Speaker 1: could only be clever enough to figure out a way
Speaker 1: to harness that pressure. My friend, you would have harnessed
Speaker 1: what's called steam power. That's right, and that is the
Speaker 1: show for today. And uh Robert Lamb of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind wrote this one how steam technology works
Speaker 1: on our website How stuff Works. It's a good one.
Speaker 1: Robert can write a fine article that guy. Uh So,
Speaker 1: let's go back in time a little in the old
Speaker 1: way back machine steam powered one. Uh yeah, today it is.
Speaker 1: Uh so it might take a little longer to get
Speaker 1: these coal fires burning and sound different. But Jerry, it's
Speaker 1: hard at work over their shoveling coal throwing the levers.
Speaker 1: So let's go back. Uh we're gonna need a lot
Speaker 1: of cold Jerry, because we're going back all the way
Speaker 1: to a D seventy five shovel faster Jerry, how out
Speaker 1: a smile? Oh, it's just about to say, you'd be
Speaker 1: a wonderful uh whip guy for for the coal shovelers.
Speaker 1: But not if you're asking him to smile, because then
Speaker 1: it turns into a Broadway show. How about a smile?
Speaker 1: Then the next song is called how about a smile?
Speaker 1: And the cold shoveler singing, Yeah, that's not bad. Actually
Speaker 1: I'm picturing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Yeah, were they shoveling coal? No, they
Speaker 1: were mining. Okay, so I guess in a way, they're
Speaker 1: shoveling coal, but they were getting out of the ground.
Speaker 1: They were extracting it rather than depositing it into a fire.
Speaker 1: That was all wrong. So let's go back to and
Speaker 1: a true hero named Hero, the Great mathematician Hero. He
Speaker 1: was writing books on mechanics. He was thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about air and payback he us, and way back in
Speaker 1: he actually conceived of steam as an engine in a
Speaker 1: way that we'll see came back to roost a bit,
Speaker 1: back to roosts at the right. It left for a
Speaker 1: while like a chicken, and then it came back and roosted. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the technology to pull it off at
Speaker 1: the time, but what he thought about was a hollow
Speaker 1: sphere with these bent two tubes coming out the side,
Speaker 1: and then fill that that thing with water. Let's say
Speaker 1: it looks like a football with arms. Fill up that
Speaker 1: football with water, put it over a fire, and eventually
Speaker 1: that water is gonna boil. It's going to turn into water.
Speaker 1: Vapor inside and it's gonna come out those arms and
Speaker 1: it's gonna spin that little football and its perfectly thrown spiral,
Speaker 1: or it's gonna go spin around in an axis like
Speaker 1: Curly on his shoulder on the on the floor from
Speaker 1: the Three Stooges. Yeah, but it's attached to something over
Speaker 1: the fire. Yeah, exactly, so it's spinning, spinning. Um. He
Speaker 1: called that thing in a Leo pile. And he actually
Speaker 1: had a number of different ideas and inventions too, theoretical
Speaker 1: ones using steam. One was a steam powered bird and
Speaker 1: this would have been about the right time for the
Speaker 1: Clash of the Titans. Remember that little robot steam bird
Speaker 1: in there? Uh the first movie, Yeah, the original one
Speaker 1: with Harry Hamlin. Yeah, I mean that's basically this guy
Speaker 1: is the one who came up with that boy. That
Speaker 1: Medusa really scared me when I was here, and I'd
Speaker 1: completely avoided that remake because it looks so bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that when I was like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: that was a Clash of the Titans, and I thought
Speaker 1: about the remake Clash of the Titans. Nobody's actually they're
Speaker 1: not making these movies as like an homage to a
Speaker 1: great movie. They're doing it because they're like, uh, we
Speaker 1: don't have any ideas, so we're just gonna poke your
Speaker 1: nostalgia and and hopefully get a few bucks out of
Speaker 1: you and disappoint you and probably ruined the original one
Speaker 1: for you. That's true. But while I do love nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Is evidence in our show on Nostalgia, my nostalgia poke
Speaker 1: button as a cover over it, so when people go
Speaker 1: to poke it, they just get rebuffed. You should get
Speaker 1: one of those ones that shock people when they should.
Speaker 1: But I have to raise that cover to allow my
Speaker 1: button to be pushed. So how do you I mean, like,
Speaker 1: how did that cover get raised? I have to allow it,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to want to dive into the
Speaker 1: pool of nostalgia. You can't just come along and be like,
Speaker 1: oh look another red dawn poke button. You know, did
Speaker 1: that ever get made? Yeah? Okay, so Hero right, yeah, hero,
Speaker 1: Hero comes up with this thing. He was very much limited,
Speaker 1: and this would be the case for hundreds tens of centuries.
Speaker 1: Um that steam power was the theoretically far more advanced
Speaker 1: than practical material science. Yeah they were. He was way
Speaker 1: ahead of his time. Yeah, I mean steam that the
Speaker 1: power you can harness from steam is practically unlimited by
Speaker 1: the depending on the materials that can hold the thing. Right,
Speaker 1: if you have material that can hold the infinitely dense
Speaker 1: amount of steam or infinitely pressurized pressurized amount of steam,
Speaker 1: you could run the world, my friend. But we don't
Speaker 1: have that, and Hero definitely didn't have it. He basically
Speaker 1: could just draw it and say this will be great someday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was great. I mean, that's that's how things get made.
Speaker 1: He was just ahead of his time, like by about
Speaker 1: six years. He was a futurist. Uh So flash forward
Speaker 1: will rev up the machine again and we'll put her
Speaker 1: along to sixteen o six. We're in Italy now, and
Speaker 1: one that Giovanni Batista de la Porte, the of Naples, said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've got some theories about steam too,
Speaker 1: and I think what we can do is actually create
Speaker 1: a vacuum. So if we take that water that's steam
Speaker 1: and it's in a closed container, it's going to increase
Speaker 1: pressure in there, like we're talking about. So if we
Speaker 1: condense it back down to water by cooling it in
Speaker 1: that same chamber. Because they hadn't quite figured out that
Speaker 1: you should do this separately, which we'll get to uh.
Speaker 1: He said, that will decrease pressure in in theory, it'll
Speaker 1: create a vacuum, it'll create a pull. Right, they went genius, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. In the French of course, said let's see
Speaker 1: how we can apply this to cooking, and they did,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah. Within them, I think about seventy years
Speaker 1: a guy named Denipe Papin who was not related to
Speaker 1: Jacques Pepin. I wonder why I heard that name, but
Speaker 1: may have been who was Jacque Pepin, very famous French chef. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: great guy, I couldn't I thought you were talking about
Speaker 1: Mario Tally. No, that's Italy. This is France. Right. They
Speaker 1: basically took this idea and they said, surely there's a
Speaker 1: way to use this for cooking, and Dinny Popan created
Speaker 1: what is essentially the first pressure cooker. Yeah, the name
Speaker 1: is so great, the digester or engine for softening bones.
Speaker 1: It would extract like proteins and fats and all that
Speaker 1: stuff from the bones and leave the bones brittle, so
Speaker 1: you can turn the bones into bone powder and get
Speaker 1: all the good stuff from it and cook with that. Right, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure though. He ended up attaching a piston
Speaker 1: essentially to it. Why did he do that as a
Speaker 1: pressure release valve? Okay, yeah, alright, now that that makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: So he added basically the world's first pressure relief valve
Speaker 1: to the world's first pressure cooker. Yeah, the first steam
Speaker 1: powered piston. Like he didn't know it yet, he was
Speaker 1: laying the groundwork for an engine. Yeah. That's definitely one
Speaker 1: thing that emerged from researching this, Chuck, is that, like
Speaker 1: the history of steam power is definitely built on the
Speaker 1: backs of earlier people. That's neat you can trace it
Speaker 1: all back to one guy. Yeah, who's like, go forth
Speaker 1: and make this. Do you know what struck me was
Speaker 1: I was researching all these great men doing these things,
Speaker 1: and I thought, how much further would we be along
Speaker 1: in the world if women, all throughout antiquity just could
Speaker 1: do whatever they wanted as well? Yeah, and contribute themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like they literally cut off half of society and said
Speaker 1: you just go do this and that that's valuable to
Speaker 1: two raise families and to you know, cooking clean and
Speaker 1: do all the things that women were forced to do
Speaker 1: back then. But they could also do other things. I bet.
Speaker 1: I mean they were doing other things. And I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say that they weren't making advances, but they
Speaker 1: certainly taking it that way. They weren't allowed to go
Speaker 1: into the science labs. No, but you make a good point,
Speaker 1: like if if raising a family is an extremely important pursuit,
Speaker 1: which I think we both agree it is, would society
Speaker 1: be as far as it is now if men and
Speaker 1: women had been equally involved in pursuing science and nobody
Speaker 1: was raising the family. Yeah, Like, what two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: there's a lady who could have figured out a cure
Speaker 1: for cancer, but in her family like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you you scrubbed that thing and turned that butter wonder
Speaker 1: and she just muttered to herself, like I cure you anyway. Uh.
Speaker 1: And necessity as a mother of invention is the other
Speaker 1: thing that really came to mind, because all these advancements
Speaker 1: usually came along because they wanted to do something like specifically, well,
Speaker 1: almost every time there was an advancement, and definitely material science,
Speaker 1: there was somebody who had invented a new steam thing
Speaker 1: that was limited by the the poor materials available at
Speaker 1: the time. When the new materials came along, they just
Speaker 1: immediately used it for the steam invention that had been
Speaker 1: drummed up a hundred years but four yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so it just constantly was advancing. Now I think I
Speaker 1: have just bungled my message so poorly that people are
Speaker 1: gonna say, chuck, there were plenty of women of science
Speaker 1: in the early days. So to make up for that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do a podcast on the early
Speaker 1: pioneers of science who are women? Alright, I pledged to
Speaker 1: do that now. But my message was pure, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Anybody who doesn't get that, sometimes I
Speaker 1: don't talk so good, which is funny because it's your job, right.
Speaker 1: All right, So seventeenth century, we're going forward in time
Speaker 1: a little bit more, and over in England where we
Speaker 1: just got back from, they had a timber crisis because
Speaker 1: they were they were advancing. They were building so many
Speaker 1: things made out of wood, uh, namely ships and of
Speaker 1: course homes and things. Uh. And they were in those
Speaker 1: homes they need a lot of firewood. So you still
Speaker 1: needed the wood to build ships and things. But they
Speaker 1: found out, hey, we can use coal for fires at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're running low on timber, so we need to allocate
Speaker 1: it smartly. Yeah, so let's use coal, which was great,
Speaker 1: but to get more coal, you have to dig deeper,
Speaker 1: and to dig deeper means it's gonna be wetter. You're
Speaker 1: gonna hit the water table eventually. And so eventually this
Speaker 1: all led to a problem, which was, Hey, we're down
Speaker 1: in this coal mine now and it's full of water.
Speaker 1: How can we rectify this? Right? So necessity once again
Speaker 1: pops up. Everybody just stood around thinking for about fifty years.
Speaker 1: Everything came to halt, and then finally was a woman
Speaker 1: in the background going, I'll tell you how to do
Speaker 1: this the student name. Finally a man spoke up and
Speaker 1: everyone listen, that's right. The guy in named Thomas Savory.
Speaker 1: He was a military engineer. He had come up with
Speaker 1: something that he called a miner's friend, right, which I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the best name for it, but
Speaker 1: maybe it was. So his miner's Friend was basically, it's
Speaker 1: it's really neat. So it's very tough to describe this
Speaker 1: stuff from here on out. Every time we describe something,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get lost. So just go look up a
Speaker 1: diagram of what we're talking about helps and it definitely helps.
Speaker 1: For sure, it helped me big time. Basically, what it
Speaker 1: was was there was a pot of boiling water. And
Speaker 1: in this pot of boiling water there the steam would
Speaker 1: be created. And a pot I mean an enclosed pot
Speaker 1: with like pipes coming out but valves keeping it shut, right,
Speaker 1: and they you would create steam and this the steam
Speaker 1: would be transferred into another chamber with a pipe that
Speaker 1: was going down into the to the water that you
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of the ground. Okay, okay, you
Speaker 1: would introduce steam into this right, and then you would
Speaker 1: introduce cold water into that steam filled chamber and it
Speaker 1: would suddenly condense the water, create a vacuum, and that
Speaker 1: vacuum would pump the water out of the ground. Then
Speaker 1: you had another pipe that would siphon off the water
Speaker 1: from that chamber because there was a non return valve.
Speaker 1: Once the water came up, it couldn't go back down.
Speaker 1: That was the key. And then they would pump the
Speaker 1: water out of that tube that pipe and then do
Speaker 1: the whole process over again. Yeah, and it worked pretty well.
Speaker 1: He didn't sell a ton of them to the mining
Speaker 1: It didn't become the miner's friend like he thought. What
Speaker 1: it really became was the rich person who wanted to
Speaker 1: garden friend this. Let's pump our swampy es stayed out
Speaker 1: friend pretty much. And the reason why is because to
Speaker 1: to run it effectively and safely, you could only get
Speaker 1: about of water out. If you're pumping water of a
Speaker 1: five foot mine, then then you had to have one
Speaker 1: of these huge setups everyt and be pumping up to
Speaker 1: a reservoir that eventually pumped it up out of the mine.
Speaker 1: So there's no way you could do that. Plus, every
Speaker 1: one of these setups had to have people running the valves,
Speaker 1: like all the valves and things were operated manually, and
Speaker 1: they had a pretty bad reputation for blowing up. Well
Speaker 1: that too, right, but it was a really it was
Speaker 1: almost this guy wanted to sell it and change the
Speaker 1: mining industry. He didn't, but he did end up creating
Speaker 1: a scientific and historical proof of concept. Yeah, and well,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's take a break and we will
Speaker 1: come back and pick back up with a couple of
Speaker 1: other brilliant dudes who advanced on those inventions. Alright, so
Speaker 1: was the miner's friend. I don't know why it's so
Speaker 1: funny to me. Uh. And just about fourteen years later,
Speaker 1: in seventeen twelve, there was a blacksmith named Thomas Newcoming
Speaker 1: and his little buddy John Kelly, who was his assistant,
Speaker 1: a plumber and glassblower. I get the feeling like everybody
Speaker 1: back then, blue glass, I just knew what you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: make your own window. Like today how everyone? Uh what
Speaker 1: do is something everyone can do today? Um? Drive a car? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or complain on social media. That's stop posting personal stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the glass blowing of today, posting on social media,
Speaker 1: complaining on it. I think you might be right. So
Speaker 1: he was a glass blower and plumber. His assistant was
Speaker 1: and um, they said, you know what, let's create a
Speaker 1: better system. It's more efficient. He took it was called
Speaker 1: the Newcoming Engine. I guess Callie as an assistant, getting
Speaker 1: didn't get his name in there. I would have lobbied
Speaker 1: for the new Callie or something, maybe combined the names.
Speaker 1: It's clever, but newcoming. No, it's my name, assistant. So
Speaker 1: they took Savori's uh separation of the boiler and then
Speaker 1: added Poppins steam driven piston, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they had the Newcoming Engine. Well they no, they took
Speaker 1: the boiler and put it combined it together, right, so
Speaker 1: like you had you had this piston and it was
Speaker 1: heated and then cooled, and then heated and cooled, so
Speaker 1: it's like combined into one. Yes, but it was a
Speaker 1: piston that was moving up and down right. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was a piston that was moving up and
Speaker 1: down via this thing that looks kind of like a seesaw. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was connected to that, right, And on the other
Speaker 1: end of that seesaw was the pump. So one end
Speaker 1: is a piston moving this thing up and down like
Speaker 1: the seesaw. On the other ends the pump. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: what it's really doing is it's pulling it down on
Speaker 1: either side. Yeah, it's not pushing ever, like one side
Speaker 1: pulls making it one side go up. On the other
Speaker 1: side poles making the other side go up. Right, So
Speaker 1: you've got a um, you've got that that steam being
Speaker 1: generated and it's pushing the piston up and then you
Speaker 1: hit it with some cold water and the vacuum is created. Right,
Speaker 1: And this thing could go through twelve cycles a minute. Hey,
Speaker 1: not bad, It's true, and um, it was. It was
Speaker 1: beyond improved concept, Like this thing actually really worked. You
Speaker 1: could use it to do all sorts of work with Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was in hundreds of minds all over Britain, uh,
Speaker 1: and in Europe. So people were like digging into this
Speaker 1: thing called the engine for the first time. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was pretty amazing. But what happened was with everything, these
Speaker 1: engineers start to say, you know what, let's improve on this,
Speaker 1: let's improve the efficiency with the pump, let's improve these cylinders. Uh.
Speaker 1: You get better iron along the way, stronger iron. And
Speaker 1: this newcoming engine is just kind of refined over a
Speaker 1: period of years, right, just from people tinkering with it. Right,
Speaker 1: it's working better and better. And there was one guy
Speaker 1: whose name you'll probably recognized. His name is James Watt.
Speaker 1: I think he was born in England, but he made
Speaker 1: his name in Glasgow, Scotland. Yeah, my new favorite country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great country. I think his his I think
Speaker 1: his name was James the game change or what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he was a boxer, that's what he would have
Speaker 1: been called. Although he took he took the Newcomban engine
Speaker 1: and changed it back closer to the miner's friend though,
Speaker 1: because the new coming combined the um the the boiler
Speaker 1: with the condenser and he separated him out again. What
Speaker 1: he figured out was if you just keep the piston hot, right,
Speaker 1: the piston chamber hot and you have a separate condenser,
Speaker 1: you're gonna use less energy keeping the condenser cool and
Speaker 1: the piston hot. Because one of the dumb things about
Speaker 1: the Newcomban engine and the reason why it took so
Speaker 1: long to go through these cycles so where you could
Speaker 1: only do twelve a minute, was because when when it
Speaker 1: was hot and the steam rose, when you hit hit
Speaker 1: it with that cold water, it cooled off and a
Speaker 1: vacuum was created. You had to wait for the thing
Speaker 1: to heat up again to get the steam. If you
Speaker 1: had the cool water over here and the steam over here,
Speaker 1: you would keep the hot side hot and the cool
Speaker 1: side cool. Dlt it us and you could hit him.
Speaker 1: You could use them to hit the the piston as
Speaker 1: often as you wanted, and it really really improved. Um
Speaker 1: it's efficiency. Yeah, like the engine is really starting to
Speaker 1: take hold now and hum like an engine should. So
Speaker 1: he partners up with a guy named Matthew Bolton. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure now spelled differently than Michael. There's a
Speaker 1: U in there. Michael's just b O L t O
Speaker 1: N right. Well, the this guy's is the British spelling. Oh,
Speaker 1: so he could be a distant relative. You never know.
Speaker 1: I like to think, so, uh, whatever happened to Michael Bolton?
Speaker 1: You guarantee he's still touring and making records and stuff.
Speaker 1: Guys like that. They don't go away. They might not
Speaker 1: be in the international limelight and more, but they're still
Speaker 1: doing what they do. There's always a home in Branson,
Speaker 1: Missouri or Vegas, all right. So what has partnered up
Speaker 1: with Bolton? Um they are making it more fuel efficient
Speaker 1: engine now with that separate condenser. And this led to
Speaker 1: to other inventions, one called the flyball Governor and one
Speaker 1: called the double acting Engine. The flyball Governor is so difficult,
Speaker 1: got to look it up. There's videos on YouTube. You
Speaker 1: can't just look up a picture of it. You have
Speaker 1: to see like an animated version of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: once you see it, it all makes sense. And I
Speaker 1: want to say I want to give a huge shout
Speaker 1: out to a site that I found extremely helpful. UM
Speaker 1: it's called Animated Engines dot com and they have all
Speaker 1: these like just just graphics of engines and you can
Speaker 1: speed up the friends persecutor slow it down and it
Speaker 1: shows you like all the moving parts. You get it,
Speaker 1: You just get it. But the flyball governors. So we'll
Speaker 1: confuse you now with words. Well, no, the fireball governor,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna say just go look it up. But
Speaker 1: basically it is a way to automate the opening and
Speaker 1: closing of valves using steve the steam that's being produced itself.
Speaker 1: So what figured out this thing is making a lot
Speaker 1: of steam, and a lot of steam is going to waste.
Speaker 1: What if I took this waste steam and redirected it
Speaker 1: to do other stuff like open and closed valves. That
Speaker 1: was a huge innovation. They also came up with the
Speaker 1: double acting engine, where they figured out, like, you don't
Speaker 1: need to create a vacuum anymore, guys, we can just
Speaker 1: use steam to make the pists and go up and
Speaker 1: steam to make the piston go down. Double acting engine.
Speaker 1: Pretty neat. Yeah, that was Those were enormous, enormous changes.
Speaker 1: Again that laid a bunch of groundwork, Like they kicked
Speaker 1: the thing forward and said, hey, twenty years from now,
Speaker 1: get your inventors together, because we just came up with
Speaker 1: some new ideas that you guys need to go build
Speaker 1: better metal to contain it with. And don't forget about us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: James Watt and I'm the other guy exactly. So what
Speaker 1: this is what would set the table for the beginnings
Speaker 1: of the industrial revolution which began in the textile industry.
Speaker 1: Uh and and wolves specifically, for many many years had
Speaker 1: been process by hand. Then they eventually took it down
Speaker 1: by the river and had a water mill that would
Speaker 1: that would you had a van by the river and
Speaker 1: this water mill would would you know? You've all seen
Speaker 1: how those work if you've been to any think still
Speaker 1: Mountain Park here still has one pretty neat basically just
Speaker 1: using hydro well les but say hydro electric, but hydro
Speaker 1: power to spin a wheel. And they figured out, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we steam instead? And Bolton and Watts engine
Speaker 1: works really well and people are using it like crazy.
Speaker 1: But they were so early in the game. They had
Speaker 1: all these patents that sort of made it hard, Like
Speaker 1: these mines were going broke paying money on these patents
Speaker 1: to to use this technology. What are they called royalties.
Speaker 1: And so this other dude comes along, a guy named
Speaker 1: Richard Trevorth Thick from Cornwall in England, I think it's
Speaker 1: southwest south what yeah, known for their game hens and
Speaker 1: they're supposed to have a great witchcraft museum there. I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to go to but still have not been
Speaker 1: able to make it. So they're known for game hens,
Speaker 1: the Cornish engine which we're talking about, and a witchcraft museum.
Speaker 1: Yeah not bad. No, that's not bad at all. Uh
Speaker 1: and corn Yeah corn. So he was living in Cornwall
Speaker 1: and he saw what was going on with all these miners.
Speaker 1: He said, you know what I'm gonna do. Screw those
Speaker 1: guys in their patents. I'm gonna just think of brand
Speaker 1: new technology. That's better that you don't have to pay
Speaker 1: royalties on their patents on patent. He had a real
Speaker 1: bad attitude. Yeah, but he was smart. He was he
Speaker 1: actually was super smart. This guy may have pushed them
Speaker 1: further ahead than even Watt. And I've never heard of
Speaker 1: the guy before you. No, I have the impressiment. He's
Speaker 1: a national hero in England probably so um. But he uh,
Speaker 1: he had some he he had the great fortune of
Speaker 1: having some much more improved materials available to him. So
Speaker 1: for a long time people had said, like, man, if
Speaker 1: we could just get these containing vessels to hold really
Speaker 1: high pressure, we could do amazing stuff with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new pressure is what drove the pistons. So the
Speaker 1: more pressure the better, right, yeah, I mean if you could,
Speaker 1: if you can, like you also, not only the more
Speaker 1: pressure the better, the less um initial input you would
Speaker 1: have to put in with energy would be more energy efficient, right,
Speaker 1: you could just get right, So try to think. Um
Speaker 1: had the advantage of having really good, better materials available
Speaker 1: to him to make this stuff. So he um created
Speaker 1: this Cornish engine, and the Cornish engine used higher pressure.
Speaker 1: But not only that, it was a compounding engine, meaning
Speaker 1: that UM it had it used the steam in more
Speaker 1: than one way. Right, So rather than like one piston,
Speaker 1: He's like, why not have four pistons and one piston
Speaker 1: is fired and then some steam from that piston escapes
Speaker 1: and fires another pistons, another and another, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you're doing four times the work. I'm from Cornwall.
Speaker 1: It was amazing, and he was. There was an American
Speaker 1: and men her name Oliver Evans, who was kind of
Speaker 1: doing similar things in the United States, and then a
Speaker 1: guy named Arthur wolf I'm sorry, Arthur Wolfe was the
Speaker 1: when it came up with a compounding Oh right, yeah, yeah, Travis.
Speaker 1: His main contribution was basically just making a more rock solid, cheaper, lighter,
Speaker 1: more efficient engine that used high pressure Yeah, it's a wolf.
Speaker 1: Have you O O l F Virginia Woolf not wolf?
Speaker 1: Well wolf, It just seems funny looking. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: a brewery engineer. He made beer, and he's the one
Speaker 1: that said, yeah, why don't we get all these pistons going,
Speaker 1: pistons firing more pistons, pistons everywhere? It just made total sense.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Yes? All right? They got
Speaker 1: steam coming out of everywhere, steam engines, they're working there,
Speaker 1: they're turning pistons and so all of this eventually would
Speaker 1: lead to used to move things and people around. People like,
Speaker 1: I'm so tired of walking my legs for so bad?
Speaker 1: Can you take the steam technology and like make a
Speaker 1: steam powered car? And apparently people have been working on
Speaker 1: it for a while. There's some debate over who created
Speaker 1: the first steam powered vehicle, And supposedly there's a guy
Speaker 1: named Ferdinand Verbist who's the verby Ist fir to end
Speaker 1: he supposedly created a steam car in sixteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's up for debate. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like you could draw a schematic of something,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily mean you actually created it. I
Speaker 1: think is the issue, Like we we have no idea
Speaker 1: what was actually on the other side of a newcomb
Speaker 1: in um steam engine. We just because none of the
Speaker 1: diagrams ever mentioned it. It's all about the steam engine itself.
Speaker 1: They don't talk about like the pumps, so we don't
Speaker 1: really know what kind of pumps they were using. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So if we go back, we can't
Speaker 1: say for certain that this guy did it. It's possible,
Speaker 1: but I think widely the guy named Nicolau Joseph Kuno,
Speaker 1: who is a friend inventor, obviously created a steam powered
Speaker 1: vehicle in seventeen sixty nine. But steam powered cars they
Speaker 1: went virtually nowhere. That's like when I've been at the snowboard,
Speaker 1: I thought, because evidence by my crayon drawing the skiboard,
Speaker 1: and then we heard from people who said, sorry, the
Speaker 1: snowboarders actually before that even so whatever, But like you said,
Speaker 1: I created that in a vacuum, a vacuum created by
Speaker 1: condensing water vapors. So as far as I'm concerned, I
Speaker 1: did in the snowboard. Sure, yeah, you're tapped into the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: People wanted to go really fast on a skateboard down
Speaker 1: a mountain while it was snow covered, and you just
Speaker 1: wanted to deliver on that. In six year old Chuck
Speaker 1: and Stone Mountain, Georgia, it was I was so keyte
Speaker 1: to see a water wheel, right, I'd seen my first
Speaker 1: ski movie, which one Now I was just kidding, but
Speaker 1: those were big back then. Sure remember Better Off Dead? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure that was a ski movie of sorts. Yeah, part
Speaker 1: that was. Someone said something funny on Twitter today about
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, some politician, he said,
Speaker 1: reminds him of an eighties ski movie villain. It was
Speaker 1: really good because every ski movie the eighties had a
Speaker 1: bad guy. Oh yeah, it was always the developer looking
Speaker 1: to build condos at the ski resort. Exactly. All right,
Speaker 1: So you're right, the car is one thing, but what
Speaker 1: if we could make something larger? Uh? Treviorthik actually was
Speaker 1: kind of key in this, and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we've got these things they whether, they don't call them
Speaker 1: railroad tracks yet, they just called them rails on the ground.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and you hook a donkey up to a cart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's to help. It's really to help the donkey, sure,
Speaker 1: because they're so stupid they can't walk in a straight line. Really.
Speaker 1: But but if they're pulling a cart on rails that
Speaker 1: have already been laid out on the path they're supposed
Speaker 1: to follow, they're fine. Just give him a couple of
Speaker 1: carrots and maybe a nice scratch behind the ear and
Speaker 1: they're okay. Yeah, they were called tramways officially. I was
Speaker 1: just kidding. So Trevior think is like, hey, let's let's
Speaker 1: put something steam powered on these tracks. Brilliant, and he
Speaker 1: tried it. He actually came up with something UM called
Speaker 1: Trevor Thicks portable steam engine, which he called the Puffing Devil.
Speaker 1: That was his name for it, and uh, it worked.
Speaker 1: He did a demonstration where it hauled ten tons of
Speaker 1: iron for ten miles. You know how huge that is
Speaker 1: at the time. Sure, yeah, amazing because everything, everything up
Speaker 1: to that point had been hauled by donkeys horse power, Yeah,
Speaker 1: literal horse power. Right, um yeah, obviously not just donkeys.
Speaker 1: There were horses too, but everything was very much localized.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we've said it yet, but steam
Speaker 1: power was the um the literal engine for the industrial revolution.
Speaker 1: This is where it all started, you know. And the
Speaker 1: way that it started was you could suddenly take timber
Speaker 1: in this area and move it over to this area
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away. The coal in this area to
Speaker 1: power these steam engines over here changed the course of history.
Speaker 1: It did water turning into water vapor and containing that.
Speaker 1: It's amazing and it's it's started it in England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just pretty neat. You're pandering. No, it's true, the
Speaker 1: like over here in America. We're like, yeah, the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution really picked up in the nineteenth century with America.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's it's roots are definitely further back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is in uh what eighteen o four? I think
Speaker 1: I learned that England cannot be flattered, right, flattery, don't
Speaker 1: pander to us? All right, so it's eighteen o eight,
Speaker 1: you've got what do you call it? The the Industrial Revolution? No,
Speaker 1: the Devil's puffer, the puffer devil, the puffing devil, puffing devil,
Speaker 1: like the Devil's puffer. Sure that is, uh miner's friend.
Speaker 1: You got those got a party? Uh so this is
Speaker 1: a portable steam engine. He takes it to London, Central London,
Speaker 1: puts it on a circular track and everyone goes blind, me,
Speaker 1: what is that it is of the devil? It's a
Speaker 1: puffing devil. Yeah, and it's amazing. Uh And that was
Speaker 1: an engineer there named George Stevenson and a couple of
Speaker 1: decades after Treviorthick, he said, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take that and I'm gonna like everyone else before, saying
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make it better, more efficient, And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden things got so good. They actually opened up
Speaker 1: what I think is the first town to town railroad
Speaker 1: line between because they're trying to move coal from Durham
Speaker 1: to Stockton at a shipping port and it works so well,
Speaker 1: they said, all right, let's do this. Let's let's put
Speaker 1: in the infrastructure, build what this guy is calling a
Speaker 1: locomotive track, and that was I think the very first
Speaker 1: operating locomotive track rail line and it didn't just carry cargo,
Speaker 1: it carried six hundred passengers. Yeah. Yeah, so why don't
Speaker 1: we put people on that thing? And they're like, is
Speaker 1: this safe? And he's like, no, not at all, But
Speaker 1: I really have a lot to prove. So just pick
Speaker 1: six criminals who cares, Yeah, don't sit near the boiler
Speaker 1: and you'll be fine. Yeah. Uh So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: there's people are still tinkering around with the steam car
Speaker 1: that didn't go away, but it never took off. No,
Speaker 1: and um, the steam locomotive was just this beautiful design
Speaker 1: to think about it. So let's go back to all
Speaker 1: the steam engines we talked about. It's um, steam moving
Speaker 1: a piston back and forth, back and forth, right or
Speaker 1: up and down, of course, sure, but in this case
Speaker 1: it's going um, it's moving horizontally. The piston is and
Speaker 1: the piston is attached to a bar that's attached to
Speaker 1: a wheel, and if you want to get kind of fancy,
Speaker 1: you can attach several wheels to this bar. And as
Speaker 1: the pistons moving back and forth, this bar is actually
Speaker 1: making an a lipse and as far as the wheels
Speaker 1: are concerned, they're making circles. And you're moving forward as
Speaker 1: this is happening. And again, go to animated Engines dot
Speaker 1: com and look up a steam locomotive and it's just
Speaker 1: amazing and it's design like these people really just got
Speaker 1: in there and roll up their shirt sleeves and they
Speaker 1: had like cold dust down their faces and really they
Speaker 1: were doing like some real engineering. Oh yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: so impressed with the guys who who made this stuff.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. You know there, of course, there's no surprise.
Speaker 1: But there are I don't know what they call themselves,
Speaker 1: but there are big time train officionados that go and
Speaker 1: just watch trains, trainoids. They might be called train watchers,
Speaker 1: even train spotters. No, are you sure? I don't think so, probably,
Speaker 1: but they trainees. I can't remember where I came across it,
Speaker 1: but it was in another podcast I was researching and
Speaker 1: found this whole subculture of people that that find these
Speaker 1: old you know us. I mean they watch all kinds
Speaker 1: of trains, but mainly they what really like get them going,
Speaker 1: We really get some out of in the morning. It
Speaker 1: really gets there's their miner's friend up. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: promise stuff, the promise of an old fashioned steam locomotive
Speaker 1: that's going through town because they still have them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's pretty cool. I mean, I get white
Speaker 1: people do it. It's sort of like birding, you know.
Speaker 1: It's a very solitary kind of quiet thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then that train rumbles by, and I mean, like I
Speaker 1: I understand, I've never been into trains or whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: more just I think the steam engine on a steam
Speaker 1: locomotive is amazing. Yeah, and you like to take trains. Sure,
Speaker 1: we took a train from Manchester to Edinburgh. Lovely. It
Speaker 1: was a really nice ride to the English countryside. In
Speaker 1: Scottish I couldn't tell the difference. I could. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in Scotland now I know, all right. So the
Speaker 1: steam engine is chugging along. Um Stephen, they called it
Speaker 1: so so cool. He was a conductor on locomotion number one.
Speaker 1: That one was six center passengers. Yeah, it's just so
Speaker 1: cool that they named it like locomotion number one. This
Speaker 1: is the very first time they've been done. They were
Speaker 1: very prescient. Just so cool. It's like the first plane
Speaker 1: flight or something. We need to do one on the right, brothers, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to do that there from Ohio. No. Sorry, ever,
Speaker 1: would't even say their name, So Chuck the steam locomotive is.
Speaker 1: It was pretty much an out of the gate hit.
Speaker 1: Some poor people were still working on the steam powered car.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime other people are like, what about
Speaker 1: steam boats, let's come up with something like that, and um,
Speaker 1: some people have been kicking around the idea for that
Speaker 1: as well. And apparently it followed pretty closely the evolution
Speaker 1: of the steam locomotive too. Um, just people building on
Speaker 1: ideas and people coming with proof of concepts. And it
Speaker 1: was an American guy named Rob Fulton who created the
Speaker 1: first steam powered paddle wheeled boat that showed that it
Speaker 1: was actually capable of moving up and down rivers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that there was There was a guy in England
Speaker 1: and about forty years earlier named Jonathan Hall who had
Speaker 1: the first steam powered tugboat, but it didn't work too
Speaker 1: well because again the technology with these newcomen and savory
Speaker 1: engines just weren't good enough. But it was really Fulton
Speaker 1: who said, you know, come aboard, how quaint is this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you like my captain's hat? Yeah? Traveling up and
Speaker 1: down the river with a paddle boat? How quaint. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have any future things to compare it to,
Speaker 1: so it's just contemporary to us. Well in dudes that
Speaker 1: were professional oarsmen were like, no, I really like the
Speaker 1: looks of this exactly. It's wonderful. So Fulton created, um,
Speaker 1: the first one. But it was a guy named WILLIAMS.
Speaker 1: Symington who gets credit for the full first fully steampowered passenger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Charlotte dun Duss and uh, Fulton's was the Claremont
Speaker 1: yea and uh in eighteen nineteen, what what they would
Speaker 1: do with these these sailing ships, because they would now
Speaker 1: outfit them with steam power for when the wind was
Speaker 1: down and just to augment the wind. And it worked
Speaker 1: out great in in eighteen nineteen, the Savannah became the
Speaker 1: very first steam powered ship to make a transatlantic crossing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently this theme power was such a threat to
Speaker 1: sail makers that this is a consortium of salemakers lobby
Speaker 1: the British government saying hey, can you can you do something?
Speaker 1: Can you stifle the steam technology? Can you shut down
Speaker 1: this amazing evancement because we make sales? Yeah, it didn't work.
Speaker 1: That's you know, every time something is automated, like the
Speaker 1: A t M or something and people say, oh, people
Speaker 1: are gonna lose jobs, you're looking at history, buddy. That's
Speaker 1: all his tree has been is one advancement that puts
Speaker 1: people out of work, creating a new industry where people
Speaker 1: can work. And it's sad in a way, but it's
Speaker 1: just part of it, you know. Yeah, it's called moving forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: too bad, So sad for the sale industry, sale making industry,
Speaker 1: but you know, there's people still sale recreationally. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now he gets the best part in my opinion, Chuck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the locomotive. So the steam turbine, the electricity
Speaker 1: producing steam powered turbine. Yeah, there's a good argument for that.
Speaker 1: I love it. Remember how electricity works episode So electricity
Speaker 1: is created when you spin a copper coil inside a magnet, right,
Speaker 1: And Michael Faraday created what he called a dynamo, which
Speaker 1: is basically that, And he said, hey, steam guys of
Speaker 1: the future, I got an idea for you. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and come up with a steam power our dynamo. Can
Speaker 1: you do it? And they set about trying to make
Speaker 1: that happen. Um. Part of the problem though, is they
Speaker 1: figured out that with a steam powered piston, which is
Speaker 1: what all steam power or steam engines powered were pistons
Speaker 1: up to that point, you could only do so many
Speaker 1: um cycles. Yeah yeah, and that's you need the dynamo
Speaker 1: going pretty fast to create some electricity or enough to
Speaker 1: use on an industrial scale. So this dude named um
Speaker 1: Charles Algernon Parsons who's British. In four he figured out
Speaker 1: that there was a new type of steel available and
Speaker 1: you could create a pretty nice turbine from it. And
Speaker 1: if you took that turbine and went all the way
Speaker 1: back to basically Hero's original idea, which was spinning, but
Speaker 1: rather than having the steam spin the actual vessel, you
Speaker 1: had vessel vessel creating steam that you're shooting out at
Speaker 1: the turbine. You can spin a dynamo pretty fast. Eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand revolutions a minute was his dynamo, and in Jack
Speaker 1: that was enough to generate electricity, and they installed it
Speaker 1: forthwith at the Fourth Bank's power station, and the rest
Speaker 1: of Europe said, holy cow, we have electricity. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact that something like eight
Speaker 1: percent of the electricity in the United States still today
Speaker 1: is made through steam steam turbines. Amazing worldwide is made
Speaker 1: through steam turbines. So like this, this guy changed the world, um,
Speaker 1: along with Faraday. Yeah, of course and everyone else before, right,
Speaker 1: because everybody's building on the work of everybody else, and
Speaker 1: all the women who supported those men who probably had
Speaker 1: better ideas, who were like, we could have come up
Speaker 1: with this years ago. So we mentioned a few times
Speaker 1: that this was dangerous, uh, exploding boilers or a problem man.
Speaker 1: Even when they figured out safety valves. Um, early safety
Speaker 1: valves wouldn't work. Actually, later safety valves have proved to
Speaker 1: not work on occasion in the case of Three Mile Island.
Speaker 1: But um they it got a bad rap in the press,
Speaker 1: of course, and that probably um slowed progress a bit,
Speaker 1: but progress continued nevertheless. Well even today there's boiler explosions,
Speaker 1: like there's a big one at a plant, a Danta
Speaker 1: Corporation plant in Tennessee, just blew up like a significant
Speaker 1: portion of the plant. And it's it's not just um
Speaker 1: that it's like throwing hot water out everywhere. The the
Speaker 1: pressure that can build up in these high pressure systems, uh,
Speaker 1: in these vessels, if the vessel gives when that when
Speaker 1: that steam hits the regular atmosphere, it expands right, and
Speaker 1: you have basically I think I read something like a
Speaker 1: ten m vessel of water, which is what you would
Speaker 1: find on like a steam locomotive. If it blew up,
Speaker 1: it would blow up to with a force equivalent of
Speaker 1: one ton of TNT. Crazy. Yeah, so it's a it's
Speaker 1: a big deal if you're blower blows up. And it
Speaker 1: all comes down to the safety valves and whether or
Speaker 1: not they're allowing too much pressure to build up, and
Speaker 1: then your vessel's ability to withstand that added pressure pretty scary.
Speaker 1: It is kind of scary, but it's yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: my scense there. Scary. I don't want to be evolving
Speaker 1: a boiler accident. Uh No, I don't think anyone wants to. UM.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna finish, I think with this, right
Speaker 1: unless you have other stuff beyond super critical fluid. Oh,
Speaker 1: I do kind of all right, we'll finish with that then,
Speaker 1: but right now, super critical fluid we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: Is earlier when you talked about solid, liquid and gas
Speaker 1: each having their molecule distribution at different densities. Um, something
Speaker 1: really strange happens, as Robert points out, when you heat uh,
Speaker 1: when you when you go through the from solid to
Speaker 1: liquid to gas, and if you heat up that gas enough,
Speaker 1: those molecules actually eventually are forced back together and it
Speaker 1: becomes like a liquid again, but it still has the
Speaker 1: properties of a gas. Yeah, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: plasma state or something almost. It's super critical fluid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that has its own name. So when when
Speaker 1: water in particular hits its um, its critical point is
Speaker 1: that seven and five degrees fahrenh height and two seventeen atmospheres.
Speaker 1: So it's very high temperature, very high pressure. When it
Speaker 1: goes beyond that point and it starts behaving quite weirdly. Um,
Speaker 1: you actually can get more steam power out of less
Speaker 1: initial fossil fuel input. So it's a sleep, it's more um,
Speaker 1: it's more efficient when you can heat something to these
Speaker 1: higher pressures, these super critical pressures, way more. Yeah. So again,
Speaker 1: the reason that you can do this is we could
Speaker 1: have always done it. We could have heated it up
Speaker 1: to this this amount, but we never had the materials
Speaker 1: to hold it. Now we have the materials to hold it.
Speaker 1: And they're they're um creating more and more electricity with
Speaker 1: supercritical steam. Yeah. And here's a little mind blowing fact
Speaker 1: for you. Uh. This water to create the supercritical liquid
Speaker 1: fluid is heated at such a high pressure that it
Speaker 1: doesn't even boil. No, it goes right from water to
Speaker 1: water vapor. That's fast. And apparently they're figuring out now
Speaker 1: that you could actually use c O two instead of
Speaker 1: water because it has a much lower critical point. It's
Speaker 1: like um five degrees fahrenheight and seventy three atmospheres, which
Speaker 1: is like nothing, and they're figuring out, we'll wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we could use a bunch of c O two in
Speaker 1: lieu of water vapor and get even more um energy
Speaker 1: out of this, Yeah, but from less input. So they're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to how to use supercritical
Speaker 1: c O two to create electricity now to power steam turbines.
Speaker 1: It's a decent band name, super Critical CR two. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: it's not bad. You got one more tidbit? That was it? Oh?
Speaker 1: That was a tidbit? Yeah? Oh great? Can I go home? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in just a minute. Uh, since we don't have anything else.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about steam power, you
Speaker 1: can type those words into the search bar at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Since I said steam power, it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. This was written by one of
Speaker 1: our jingle writers, you know, our little jingle bumpers. Sure yeah, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just want to appreciate the fact that s Y s
Speaker 1: K gives joke mos like me the opportunity to feel
Speaker 1: famous for just a leading moment. Whenever I'm listening to
Speaker 1: an episode and I'm cut to commercially here one of
Speaker 1: my little songs, it really takes me by surprise, and
Speaker 1: I think that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, I wrote that. Yeppee.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay at home dad. I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: my name for myself as at home dad, as a
Speaker 1: versatile graphic artist and film composer. And it's nice to
Speaker 1: know that at least something of mine is making it
Speaker 1: out to the masses. And speaking of being a dad,
Speaker 1: I just finished my first children's e book, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna plug since he give us says, uh, oh yeah
Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, we plug it anyway. I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of it. It's called Hector's Song. It's a tale about
Speaker 1: being who you are no matter what. That's a great message.
Speaker 1: You can get the regular read words on a page
Speaker 1: version on Kindle or or an enhanced version with narration
Speaker 1: and music on eyebooks that jacks into your brain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He recommends it for kids zero to six or so.
Speaker 1: And you can go to his website which is Elaine
Speaker 1: Osborne E A L A N elon probably O S
Speaker 1: B O R N E dot com, or just go
Speaker 1: to e books or Amazon. And thanks again, guys, J
Speaker 1: Money and Chuck E. D. You guys are the real deal.
Speaker 1: Thanks so long. We appreciate that. Man. You're the real
Speaker 1: deal too, man writing books and music and yeah stay
Speaker 1: at home dad, and yeah pretty neat, yea super neat.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us because
Speaker 1: you submitted a jingle and have now written a book,
Speaker 1: well we want to hear from you. You can tweet
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