Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, every one, welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren voc Obama, and today's
Speaker 1: episode comes to you courtesy of a little listener mail
Speaker 1: that's going old school, Lauren, and we don't have the
Speaker 1: clacks and necessarily, unless Noel decides to get super creative
Speaker 1: with this one, I'm looking over. He's giving me nothing
Speaker 1: back put in a very quiet clack, maybe a gentle
Speaker 1: Long time listeners know what I'm talking about. You guys
Speaker 1: who joined fairly recently, let's just say we spared you.
Speaker 1: But anyway, this listener mail actually came from Valerie, who
Speaker 1: sent us an email and said, I would like to
Speaker 1: suggest an episode on city water systems. I think how
Speaker 1: different countries are creating a fish and water systems, and
Speaker 1: also the system that's used in Las Vegas could be
Speaker 1: interesting for a podcast. So many both so little potable water,
Speaker 1: what is in our future? And we agree this would
Speaker 1: be an awesome episode. So we suggested it to other people,
Speaker 1: but they said we should do it. Yeah weird, Actually,
Speaker 1: I I guess we we We have talked about this
Speaker 1: a tiny bit over on forward thinking, which is a
Speaker 1: thing that I think we've been saying a lot lately
Speaker 1: on the show. Yeah. Yeah, And the Forward Thinking episodes
Speaker 1: are in a lot of ways very closely related to
Speaker 1: tech stuff because we're looking into the future now. Not
Speaker 1: all of Forward Thinking's topics are technology topics. Some of
Speaker 1: them are social or cultural or have our more science
Speaker 1: oriented than tech oriented. But if you enjoy the show,
Speaker 1: chances are you to enjoy that show too, especially since
Speaker 1: two of the three hosts of that show are this show.
Speaker 1: So just saying well, well, we'll let you do the
Speaker 1: math on that one. Um. But yeah, So, so we
Speaker 1: wanted to do this episode on the infrastructure systems that
Speaker 1: exist today and historically and some of the things that
Speaker 1: we are thinking about for that incredible and slightly terrifying future. Right, So,
Speaker 1: first of all, let's talk about why is it challenging
Speaker 1: to get clean water? Um? Lots of reasons, Lots lots
Speaker 1: of reasons. Rain doesn't fall everywhere all the time that
Speaker 1: people want to live. Um. Rivers don't flow everywhere all
Speaker 1: the time people want to live. Sometimes river courses can
Speaker 1: change over time. Yeah, Um, the climate is kind of changing.
Speaker 1: That's that's a thing. That's happening. Um. And basically, even
Speaker 1: though it's really expensive to create an upgrade infrastructure, UM,
Speaker 1: it's way more expensive to repair damage caused by failed
Speaker 1: infrastructure and or to just not let people have water. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't last all that long without that stuff. So
Speaker 1: when we get a little further into this episode, you're
Speaker 1: going to realize, like, you know, some of the some
Speaker 1: of the systems out there are a little little on
Speaker 1: the elderly side. Yeah, and really, not not upgrading your
Speaker 1: infrast structure is like playing chicken with entropy, because systems
Speaker 1: break down, they do. And if you yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and some of these systems look like it's, you know,
Speaker 1: just a true mishmash because you know, as we know,
Speaker 1: cities grow over time, some of them don't, some of
Speaker 1: them decrease in size, but in general you see population
Speaker 1: growth the change exactly. So and even if they do decrease,
Speaker 1: that's another thing that you have to you have to
Speaker 1: adjust for. Yeah, So you get you get all these
Speaker 1: different types of add ons to existing infrastructure. That means
Speaker 1: that not everything is the same. You might have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, four or five different generations of pipes in
Speaker 1: one city's infrastructure, and you know, the more complexity you add,
Speaker 1: the more likely something somewhere along the line is not
Speaker 1: going to work the way you had anticipated. In other words,
Speaker 1: stuff's gonna break and then you gotta fix it. But
Speaker 1: let's let's take a look back, way back. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: a lot of the basic principles upon which we have
Speaker 1: based in our most modern systems on go back to
Speaker 1: how far Roman times really? Yeah, so the Romans. You
Speaker 1: may have heard about the Roman aqueducts and you might think, uh,
Speaker 1: is that a hockey team. No, it's not that hockey team. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would too, centurions on on skates would be awesome.
Speaker 1: But uh so the aqueducts were a system of channels
Speaker 1: waterways that would bring water from distant places to Rome
Speaker 1: because Rome was a city that was growing much too
Speaker 1: large to be supplied by the local water sources. And
Speaker 1: mostly the most famous aqueducts are the ones that you see.
Speaker 1: They look like bridges from a distance. They're elevated. They're
Speaker 1: built on these these stone columns, but they are not
Speaker 1: bridges for road travel. They're actually water bridges. They allow
Speaker 1: water to flow, and the reason why they're elevated is
Speaker 1: because in order to make a pathway from the water
Speaker 1: source the reservoirs that the Romans were using. It sometimes
Speaker 1: meant that they had to cross things like valleys. Well,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to go down a valley if you've
Speaker 1: got water. It's hard to make the water go back
Speaker 1: up the other side of the valley, right. It would
Speaker 1: have to be going pretty fast because the way that
Speaker 1: gravity works, and most most of the time things want
Speaker 1: to go downwards and not upward. You would just have
Speaker 1: created a river in that valley as opposed to making
Speaker 1: the water go across. So by doing this aqueduct, if
Speaker 1: you could have a kind of continuous grade so that
Speaker 1: it was always going a little lower in elevation than
Speaker 1: the earlier sections, you could induce water to flow. You're
Speaker 1: letting gravity do the work for you. So the Roman
Speaker 1: system had all these aqueducts, and most of them were
Speaker 1: actually channels that were cut underneath the ground. Uh there
Speaker 1: there are quite a few aqueducts that you can see
Speaker 1: that are built up in their amazing feats of engineering.
Speaker 1: But I think even more amazing to me anyway, as
Speaker 1: the thought of all these under yeah, these channels that
Speaker 1: have been cut into the living rock so that water
Speaker 1: can flow through it. Um, and so the water would
Speaker 1: flow all the way toward Rome, and then they would
Speaker 1: direct it into giant cisterns, which are just enormous containers, right,
Speaker 1: a big old container that can hold water. And these
Speaker 1: cisterns would be in the tallest areas around Rome where
Speaker 1: the water could still flow into, right, and then a
Speaker 1: network of I believe they were using lead pipes at
Speaker 1: the time, which was turned out to be problematic. They
Speaker 1: were a little blind to the problems at the time.
Speaker 1: Um when I would direct the water from from those
Speaker 1: cisterns into into homes and fountains and other buildings, yep,
Speaker 1: they would they would run these pipes down through the
Speaker 1: various parts of Rome so that you could get access
Speaker 1: to clean water easily, so you wouldn't have to trek
Speaker 1: far like you know, because before this kind of system,
Speaker 1: the basic way you got water was you walked to
Speaker 1: the closest source of water, took you and you went
Speaker 1: to some water yep, whether that was a river or
Speaker 1: a lake or a well know, something like that, and
Speaker 1: then you would bring that back and when you were
Speaker 1: out you had to go back out again. This was
Speaker 1: trying to make that much more accessible now. In total,
Speaker 1: they're about two hundred sixty miles worth of aqueducts around
Speaker 1: the city of Rome, which is pretty phenomenal. Bad for
Speaker 1: a few thousand years ago. Yeah, and uh, they know
Speaker 1: it was a pretty effective system. They let the gravity
Speaker 1: do the work for them. They didn't have to build
Speaker 1: uh lots of pumping stations, although they did have some,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have to have as many as you
Speaker 1: would think they'd need because they were latying. Gravity do
Speaker 1: most of the work for them. Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: that basic idea of letting gravity do a lot of
Speaker 1: the work for you still applies today. Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been in buildings in New York where that's basically how
Speaker 1: the water pressure works. They've got a water tower on
Speaker 1: top of the building, and depending on on what level
Speaker 1: you're on, you get better pressure because of how far
Speaker 1: it's falling. My favorite is when you use the sinks
Speaker 1: in this building and occasionally you get the sputtering noise
Speaker 1: where it sounds like a a giant ball of cobras
Speaker 1: is just on the other side of the faucet. Um.
Speaker 1: You must use the specialist think I don't actually get
Speaker 1: I'd show you, but you can't go into that room.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about a couple of other pre industrial
Speaker 1: civilizations besides the Romans, because you'd think, well, were they
Speaker 1: the only ones who came up with this idea, And
Speaker 1: the answer to that is no, No. Other other civilizations
Speaker 1: knew that gravity worked. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't necessarily know
Speaker 1: the mechanism of it or what it was, but they
Speaker 1: knew that, hey, if you drop something, it falls, and
Speaker 1: that if you if you look at water, it runs downhill,
Speaker 1: not uphill. So you know, drawing those conclusions, you figure
Speaker 1: out that you need to get water to this place
Speaker 1: where a lot of people live, because it turns out
Speaker 1: we need water. London was one of these places. London
Speaker 1: built what is called the Great Conduit, which was another
Speaker 1: massive channel that uh that brought water in to London,
Speaker 1: actually to cheapside, two cisterns and cheapside that were then
Speaker 1: hooked up to other cisterns around the city. And if
Speaker 1: you were rich, you could afford to pay to have
Speaker 1: pipes brought into your home so that you would have
Speaker 1: running water in your home. If you weren't rich, sometimes
Speaker 1: you would try and tap into a neighbor's pipes, which
Speaker 1: could get you arrested or stealing water. Yeah, I imagine
Speaker 1: that that also must with the system in ways that
Speaker 1: made nobody happy. Yeah, you know, nothing like having an
Speaker 1: enormous leak appearing where you did not expect one to um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that this was something that London started working
Speaker 1: on in the in the thirteenth century. In the mid
Speaker 1: twelve hundreds, I heard that Constantinople, Constantinople not stand bull.
Speaker 1: Why they changed it, I can't say, but Constantinople also yeah,
Speaker 1: they created a man made river, so again kind of
Speaker 1: like the aqueduct system of Rome, but more of a
Speaker 1: river than an aqueduct um. And it was allowed to
Speaker 1: carry water both above and below ground. They had sections
Speaker 1: where again it was they had cut channels into the
Speaker 1: ground and the water would flow through there, and it
Speaker 1: was carrying water from about two fifty kilometers away from
Speaker 1: the city. Like the water source for the city was
Speaker 1: two kilometers away. Now, when you look at this, like
Speaker 1: when you look at most cities, like you look at
Speaker 1: the if you look at a map of ancient civilizations,
Speaker 1: for example, and you look at where the cities are located,
Speaker 1: they're usually right around water sources, fresh water sources. Because
Speaker 1: that was the most effective way of doing it. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's only fairly recently that we've gotten
Speaker 1: to a point where if you live really far away
Speaker 1: from fresh water sources, you can build a large city.
Speaker 1: We've had smaller you know, smaller uh, towns and villages
Speaker 1: and populations, nomadic tribes, things like that, that we're able
Speaker 1: to exist on smaller sources of fresh water. But obviously,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to have a city of
Speaker 1: any size, you need access to a lot of water,
Speaker 1: all right, And this can this can be a very
Speaker 1: large problem. For for example, Singapore up until very recently
Speaker 1: had to basically import all of their water from Malaysia.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, it's it's ended up springing up a
Speaker 1: whole industry that I'm going to talk about in another
Speaker 1: few minutes here. But um so it's so okay, um
Speaker 1: in terms of in terms of our modern water infrastructure,
Speaker 1: if you want to, you want to talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit. You're you're tired of the ancient world.
Speaker 1: I understand, Lauren. I understand you don't want to dwell
Speaker 1: in the past. I couldn't agree more, mostly because my
Speaker 1: notes are out. I'm done with all the ancient stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't have any other cities that can talk about, Lauren.
Speaker 1: So I am ready to move into the future with
Speaker 1: you boldly, yes and forcibly, where no man has gone before.
Speaker 1: No one. Sorry, sorry forgot about the next generation an
Speaker 1: old school. A lot lots of people are in the
Speaker 1: these are modern times. That's not not like no one
Speaker 1: has ever been here. We're here, that's true. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about your your basic modern water system. It's
Speaker 1: not that different in the sense that most of them
Speaker 1: tend to still rely heavily on gravity. Note pun intended.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize I was making one until I was done.
Speaker 1: Uh not, not all of them do. Some water systems
Speaker 1: use uh electric pumps and will just pump the water
Speaker 1: to maintain the right kind of water pressure for their populations.
Speaker 1: But more frequently than not, you're gonna see water towers,
Speaker 1: particularly things like small towns. You'll you'll usually see as
Speaker 1: you're going around the outskirts, you see that enormous tower
Speaker 1: and you think, wow, you know, what is the point
Speaker 1: of that? Why do you have this big tower just
Speaker 1: holding water there? And if you're in a city, like
Speaker 1: you said, Lauren, you might see on the rooftops, different
Speaker 1: individual water towers. Yeah, so what is going on here, Well,
Speaker 1: it's the same principle. You put the water at an
Speaker 1: elevated location, and by that elevate location, the weight of
Speaker 1: the water is providing the pressure you need to provide
Speaker 1: the However, many households that water tower serves or businesses
Speaker 1: or whatever, um with the right amount of water pressure
Speaker 1: so that when you turn on the faucet water comes out. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: your basic water tower is able to hold somewhere between
Speaker 1: I don't know, twoe or fifty thousand gallons of water
Speaker 1: to maybe five hundred thousand or more gallons of water
Speaker 1: at it at a time, so big capacity. Can keep
Speaker 1: in mind that your average swimming pool holds fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty thousand gallons of water, so working more water than
Speaker 1: pretty big, not small, big lots of water and um
Speaker 1: usually they are attached to some sort of well always
Speaker 1: are attached to some sort of pumping station which can
Speaker 1: pump water back up into the tower as well as
Speaker 1: usually provide direct pressure to the community. So the way
Speaker 1: this tends to work is one of two ways. You
Speaker 1: can either pump all the water up into the water
Speaker 1: tower until it reaches a certain level and then you
Speaker 1: just stop. You turn the pump off. That way, you
Speaker 1: can serve energy. That way, the gravity will pull the
Speaker 1: water down, and for every foot that that water is elevated,
Speaker 1: you get point four three pounds per square inch of pressure.
Speaker 1: Most cities have between fifty and a hundred p s I.
Speaker 1: So your water tower's height is going to determine what
Speaker 1: that water pressure is. So you've got the pump turned
Speaker 1: off the waters in the tower. When you, Lauren, decide
Speaker 1: you want to have a tasty drink of water and
Speaker 1: you turn on the faucet, then that allows the water
Speaker 1: from that water tower to come down a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's pushing all the water through the pipes. You get
Speaker 1: water through your faucet. Everyone's happy, yea, assuming that all
Speaker 1: the infrastructure is working properly, right, yes, So that is
Speaker 1: that is the general assumption if the water comes on. Now, Lauren,
Speaker 1: let's say that you decide you want a glass of
Speaker 1: water at the same time as everyone else in town
Speaker 1: has decided to take showers, flush the toilet, you know,
Speaker 1: turn the faucet on outside for no reason whatsoeb or
Speaker 1: water the lawn, wash, the car, et cetera. It's enough
Speaker 1: so that the water in the water tower has gone
Speaker 1: down to a level where it is no longer able
Speaker 1: to supply that pressure. That's where the pump kicks in.
Speaker 1: The pump is able to continuously supply more water, so
Speaker 1: it's reaching the right pressure. It also, when people start
Speaker 1: to calm down and decide they're not going to waste
Speaker 1: so much water anymore, or drink it or whatever, it
Speaker 1: can start to refill that water tower until it reaches
Speaker 1: the optimum level. Again. Now, there are other systems where
Speaker 1: the water tower is essentially a reserve unit. So the
Speaker 1: water pump is taking water from a reservoir. Could be
Speaker 1: a lake, it could be a river, it could just
Speaker 1: be an artificial reservoir. It's taking water from that reservoir
Speaker 1: and pumping it directly to the homes. And then any
Speaker 1: time that the demand outstrips the capacity of the water pump,
Speaker 1: the water tower is activated and supplements it. So either
Speaker 1: way you have kind of the symbiotic relationship between the
Speaker 1: pump and the tower. Now with the tower, the nice
Speaker 1: thing is, because of gravity, you don't have to add
Speaker 1: extra energy into the system to get the water to
Speaker 1: where it needs to go. You don't have to have
Speaker 1: all these pumping stations along the lines to keep the
Speaker 1: pressure at the right level. So, you know, we think
Speaker 1: about that for things like telephone lines. When we talked
Speaker 1: about the telephone system, how they had to have relay
Speaker 1: stations so that they could boost the signal throughout. The
Speaker 1: same sort of thing with water pressure. Right if eventually,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about it long enough, uh pathway that
Speaker 1: pressure starts, you're going to lose motion resistance along the
Speaker 1: path and you've got yeah, and you've just got too
Speaker 1: much space to fill. So um, these are ways of
Speaker 1: getting around that. So and with the gravity working for you,
Speaker 1: you have to spend less energy overall. Pumping the water
Speaker 1: up into the tower is more energy efficient because you're
Speaker 1: just filling it up to where it needs to be
Speaker 1: and then you stop, as opposed to consistently pumping water
Speaker 1: to the entire population. So in general, that's how your
Speaker 1: basic water tower works. Uh, it's pretty neat stuff. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's it's a really simple system,
Speaker 1: but I mean, but that's why it's so elegant. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's not how everyone gets their water, bob. Right, When
Speaker 1: you're further out from cities, you you're gonna either need
Speaker 1: your own well or um which you are probably going
Speaker 1: to need to use a pump in order to access. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I mean, granted, you could think about the well
Speaker 1: pumps there are, you know, the old style pump handle
Speaker 1: where you're literally pumping, but more frequently we have electronic pumps. Now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Here in the U. S Alone, we've got some sixteen
Speaker 1: million private wells, and we drill another five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: every year. Yeah. And uh so if you live outside
Speaker 1: of the city, um, which I used to. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to live out pretty far out there, then
Speaker 1: you may be using here in Atlanta, living like five
Speaker 1: miles from downtown is considered a little bit outside the city.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure I live in the city now, I'm
Speaker 1: within the city limits. So yeah, no, no, you know,
Speaker 1: actually outside where you can see the stars and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and cols and and bison occasionally, um, which
Speaker 1: we're totally domesticated. We don't have wild bison in Georgia
Speaker 1: as far as I know. Anyway, if you live out
Speaker 1: in the in the sticks, as I would say, which
Speaker 1: I used to, then you might have your own well,
Speaker 1: or you might have a communal well of some sort.
Speaker 1: But the way this works is you end up digging down.
Speaker 1: See there's this thing called the water table that exists
Speaker 1: underground and it's pretty much everywhere more or less. But
Speaker 1: you have to dig at different depths depending upon where
Speaker 1: you are right, depending on on how much rainfall a
Speaker 1: location gets, and um the other runoff that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, lots of things will determine exactly how
Speaker 1: far down you would need to go, and also the
Speaker 1: quality of the water. We'll talk about that in a
Speaker 1: second too. But if you happen to live someplace that
Speaker 1: has good aquifers, like freshwater aquifers that are at the
Speaker 1: you can access at the water table, you can dig
Speaker 1: a hole and then eventually you know you should hit water.
Speaker 1: And so for example, a shallow well might be or
Speaker 1: or less down and with that you could use what's
Speaker 1: called a jet pump. What is it jet pump too?
Speaker 1: So jet pump, Well, it does is it pumps water?
Speaker 1: But the way it does is kind of cool. You're welcome, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it uses electricity and it uses a little
Speaker 1: bit of water that you already put into the pump.
Speaker 1: It's called to prime the primate. It's drive water is
Speaker 1: what's called. So it's got a little jet, a little
Speaker 1: think of it like a nozzle that you would put
Speaker 1: on the end of a hose. And you know, by
Speaker 1: reducing the size of the pathway that the water can
Speaker 1: go through, you also increase the pressure. You put a
Speaker 1: little water in it to primate. You turn it on,
Speaker 1: it starts to emit this water at high pressure. It
Speaker 1: starts to create a vacuum, right due to the jet
Speaker 1: of water flowing out, it creating suction inside the tube, right,
Speaker 1: and the tube goes down into the well until it
Speaker 1: hits where the water is actually goes further down than
Speaker 1: that obviously, but then the water gets drawn up the
Speaker 1: tube through that vacuum, yep, and then it gets sent
Speaker 1: into a holding tank of some sort. So this isn't
Speaker 1: you know. The wells that are being used are not
Speaker 1: something that you know. When you turn on the faucet,
Speaker 1: the well kicks in and then you have to wait
Speaker 1: a while and the water comes out. The pump continues
Speaker 1: to work until the water tank reaches its optimum level
Speaker 1: and it turns off and then we'll come back on
Speaker 1: when it when the water is depleted a certain amount,
Speaker 1: so that you've kind of got your own little personal
Speaker 1: mini water tower. Yeah. And since since you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: using gravity, I mean you probably don't have your water
Speaker 1: tank forty feet above your house. Probably not, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: since you probably don't have that one, it uses instead
Speaker 1: in order to create the right amount of pressure that
Speaker 1: you're gonna need for your water. Um. They have uh
Speaker 1: an air bladder that's inside the water tank, so it's
Speaker 1: inflated and as you put water in, it compresses that bladder,
Speaker 1: the bladders pushing against the wall water. Um. And then
Speaker 1: once the water has hit the right level, and when
Speaker 1: you turn on the faucet, the bladder is pressing against
Speaker 1: the water, the water comes out the right pressure until
Speaker 1: the bladder has you know, extended about as far as
Speaker 1: it can. Then the water tank needs to be refilled
Speaker 1: by the pump. So that that's your basic system, although
Speaker 1: there are other ones too. If you have a if
Speaker 1: the water table is deeper than a jet pump may
Speaker 1: not be strong enough to create the vacuum necessary to
Speaker 1: pull the water up that height. Because the higher you go,
Speaker 1: the heavier that you know, the more the more energy need,
Speaker 1: the more more exactly, the more work you have to do,
Speaker 1: and so you might have something called a double drop
Speaker 1: jet pump or even a submersible pump, where the pump
Speaker 1: itself is under the water as opposed to at the
Speaker 1: top of the well. And in this case you would
Speaker 1: just have another kind of approach to drawing water up
Speaker 1: this very long tube and again filling up a tank,
Speaker 1: just as you would with the jet pump. So those
Speaker 1: are the other ways of getting water, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the basic ways that you would see in today's world,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States, right right, And well,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this technology and a lot
Speaker 1: of our infrastructure really has has been in place for
Speaker 1: for over a hundred years. UM. A lot of our
Speaker 1: water towers, UM distribution lines, sewer lines, storage facilities, and
Speaker 1: stuff like that were built, uh, basically immediately following World
Speaker 1: War Two. So I mean, so all of this is
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. I mean, personal pumps have have developed
Speaker 1: a little bit and changed a little bit in the
Speaker 1: following decades, but but this technology has has not changed
Speaker 1: in a long time. And what we're saying, and yet
Speaker 1: we've added lots of stuff to it. So this is
Speaker 1: where I'm talking about. How you know, the pipes that
Speaker 1: were used forty years ago are made of different stuff
Speaker 1: and are of different sizes, and the pipes that were
Speaker 1: used thirty years ago which are different from twenty, which
Speaker 1: are different from ten, which are different from today. So
Speaker 1: you've got this system where nothing is homogeneous at all,
Speaker 1: and and there, and the lifespans of all of these
Speaker 1: different products can can depend a lot on the materials
Speaker 1: that they were made from and how how carefully they
Speaker 1: were installed. Not to mention the environment itself. If you
Speaker 1: are in a place like uh, the Great White North
Speaker 1: shout out to all of our Canadian fans, a uh,
Speaker 1: then you know they have to withstand much colder temperatures
Speaker 1: than say, down here in Hot Lanta. I hate myself
Speaker 1: for saying, and I didn't even notice for half a second,
Speaker 1: which makes me hate myself more. Well, um, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So so in that's that's in the US and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world. I mean, we get we get
Speaker 1: not um not by global standards, a whole lot of
Speaker 1: water per capita here, but we we certainly get a
Speaker 1: lot more than many other places do. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are other places that have to get a lot more
Speaker 1: creative with how they manage water, how they get water,
Speaker 1: and how they distribute it. So for example, um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I could talk about Abu Dhabi really quickly.
Speaker 1: So now Abu Dhabi is is a the that are
Speaker 1: the the area of Abu Dhabi is so large and
Speaker 1: so populous, it could not have supported that population, uh
Speaker 1: like a century ago because the water management system just
Speaker 1: wasn't there. The area around Abu Dhabi has only two
Speaker 1: freshwater aquifers. All the other aquifers are salty, that's it's
Speaker 1: like seawater, and that there's no fresh water otherwise to access.
Speaker 1: So they do have wells that they've um drilled down
Speaker 1: so that they can pull up some of the water
Speaker 1: from the freshwater aquifers, but that's almost exclusively used in agriculture.
Speaker 1: Usually almost seventy of fresh water of any given community
Speaker 1: is going to be used for agriculture, right, So in
Speaker 1: this case, what they've decided to do in order to
Speaker 1: supply the population with freshwater is built a lot of
Speaker 1: desalination plants, and we've talked about those in a previous
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. Go back and search if you
Speaker 1: want to look at our discussion. We actually got to
Speaker 1: speak with an expert about the salination plants and how
Speaker 1: they're are different methods of removing salt from seawater so
Speaker 1: you can make it drinkable. Um So that was a
Speaker 1: creative way that they have used to meet the needs
Speaker 1: of their population. Right. And you know, most of the
Speaker 1: United States uh water infrastructure was was built up in
Speaker 1: the midst of the industrial era, when everyone is starting
Speaker 1: to move from urban areas or move i'm sorry, from
Speaker 1: from rural areas to urban areas. And those kind of
Speaker 1: population shifts that we saw in the early to mid
Speaker 1: twentieth century are just happening now in a lot of
Speaker 1: developing countries. So the Third World Center, for for example,
Speaker 1: estimates that there's two billion people without access to safe
Speaker 1: drinking water in Asia alone. That's yeah, it really just
Speaker 1: just depends on on your your rainfall, your river, access,
Speaker 1: your groundwater, all all of those natural resources. Um and
Speaker 1: and for for another example, um Iceland. Okay, let's let's
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the cubic meters of fresh water
Speaker 1: per capita, per per per person in a country. Um
Speaker 1: Iland has about five three thousand cubic meters of water
Speaker 1: freshwater per capita. Okay, Bow rain for example, has three disparity,
Speaker 1: not three thousand, just just three. That's Yeah, so obviously
Speaker 1: you have to get creative with the way that you
Speaker 1: are able to access and distribute water, right. And then
Speaker 1: after you have accessed and distributed that water, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: most people use water to do some stuff and then
Speaker 1: they want it to sort of go away, right, So
Speaker 1: we need to talk about how to reclaim that water
Speaker 1: and what you do with that water once you've used it.
Speaker 1: You know what, I got a great idea. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor and we'll
Speaker 1: come back and talk about that. Excellent alright, So just
Speaker 1: before the break, lawn, you brought up a great point.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't just use water to drink. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we use it for all these other sorts of things,
Speaker 1: whether it's taking a shower or washing dishes or in
Speaker 1: the toilets. There are a lot of different ways we
Speaker 1: use it. We might use it to water our lawns.
Speaker 1: And then once we use it, what do we What
Speaker 1: happens then? I mean, it goes down the drain for
Speaker 1: most of these cases, apart from the water in the
Speaker 1: lawn example, but you know it goes down the drain.
Speaker 1: What happens then? Well? Okay, so so following this entire
Speaker 1: gravity model. Um, most of the time waste water waste
Speaker 1: facilities are going to be located in some kind of
Speaker 1: low lying area. Yeah yeah, and it makes sense again
Speaker 1: because that means you let the gravity pull the water
Speaker 1: where it needs to go, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: have pumping stations to keep wastewater going, because then you're
Speaker 1: spending energy just to get rid of wastewater. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, the drain systems, whether they're on
Speaker 1: the roads or whether they're in the uh there in
Speaker 1: your house whatever, These all kind of lead to a
Speaker 1: water treatment facility. You've got pipes, you've got sewer tunnels,
Speaker 1: all that fun stuff. You've got the manholes that allow
Speaker 1: people to have access in case they need to to
Speaker 1: do maintenance on any of this system. And it's really good,
Speaker 1: by the way, to have these treatment facilities instead of
Speaker 1: just dumping waste water into into natural rivers, for example,
Speaker 1: because that will therefore, um, you know, allow you to
Speaker 1: not totally pollute your natural rivers, right, and also not
Speaker 1: give a terrible statement to anyone who lives down river
Speaker 1: of you, right exactly have fun drinking stupid. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not a great message. Okay, So so the basic the
Speaker 1: basic format of a water treatment facility. All right, so
Speaker 1: um this all right, guys, you know I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you the straight poop on this. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: some potty talk here and uh, you know it's something
Speaker 1: that we need to know about. All right. First, you
Speaker 1: got a screen. Okay, Once you get to the water
Speaker 1: treatment facility, you have you have different levels of water
Speaker 1: purification depending upon the sophistication of the facility. Sure that
Speaker 1: this will occur in several steps. The first is a
Speaker 1: physical step where where you are just just literally screens
Speaker 1: to take solid waste out of your water as much
Speaker 1: of the solid wastes as you can. Now, these screens
Speaker 1: aren't aren't incredibly fine so that they take out all
Speaker 1: particulate matter, but they get a lot of it, a
Speaker 1: lot of the larger solids. Uh. Now, the water that
Speaker 1: is left from that first screening process moves into ponds
Speaker 1: or pools, and then it's allowed to sit there for
Speaker 1: a while so that sediments in the waters start to
Speaker 1: settle into the bottom of that pool. You then end
Speaker 1: up removing that waste that tends to be about half
Speaker 1: of all the waste that's in that water at that moment,
Speaker 1: So it's still there's still quite a bit suspended within
Speaker 1: the water itself. But to get rid of about half
Speaker 1: of it that way, Uh, that's waste you will then
Speaker 1: dispose of either by putting in a landfill or maybe
Speaker 1: in an incinerator. I keep hoping for these plasma generators
Speaker 1: so that you could use it because any organic matter
Speaker 1: you could turn into sin gas, which synthetic gas that
Speaker 1: would actually be a fuel. But mr mr fusion make
Speaker 1: it go. We're still not there yet. So uh, so
Speaker 1: you've gotten rid of about fifty of the waste, that
Speaker 1: means you still got fifty percent left in the water. Uh.
Speaker 1: You then allow that water to be treated with various chemicals,
Speaker 1: mainly chlorine, which is used to kill off a lot
Speaker 1: of harmful bacteria. All right, for your for your very
Speaker 1: basic water treatment, you can then treat it with chemicals
Speaker 1: to get rid of um, anything really nasty that's still
Speaker 1: living in there. Yeah, you might use a little bacteria
Speaker 1: first to eat up any organic matter, and then use
Speaker 1: the chlorine to kill off everything. But then at that
Speaker 1: point you essentially discharge it. Assuming that it's a simple
Speaker 1: water treatment plant. But there are more sophisty ones that
Speaker 1: have more steps. Would you like to know about the
Speaker 1: other steps? Sure? I think that they involve more bacteria,
Speaker 1: don't they do? You start off with some errated tanks
Speaker 1: that hold the water and the bacteria, and that those
Speaker 1: bacteria end up consuming almost all of the waste inside
Speaker 1: that water in fact around it. And that's that's it's
Speaker 1: really cool to me that they that they use gross
Speaker 1: stuff to eat the gross stuff they don't want. And
Speaker 1: then um, but but but but then you need to
Speaker 1: get rid of that first gross stuff, right, Yeah, You
Speaker 1: move the water over into settling tanks, and then you
Speaker 1: remove that bacteria. You can treat the water again with
Speaker 1: chemicals to do that, uh, And by this time you
Speaker 1: are down to just uh, like of all the waste
Speaker 1: that you had had in that water to start with.
Speaker 1: Then you can treat it with other chemicals or remove
Speaker 1: stuff like nitrogen and phosphorus which tend to build up,
Speaker 1: use the chlorine to kill off any of the remaining bacteria,
Speaker 1: and then you discharge the water into whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: Usually it ends up going through some canal systems and
Speaker 1: into another river eventually, but at this point it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, clean water. I don't know that you
Speaker 1: would necessarily want to stand at the end of it
Speaker 1: with a glass and say yum yum. But maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: But but it's at least, you know, okay for being
Speaker 1: released into the environment relatively as waste water goes. And
Speaker 1: and to be fair, I mean, there's I want to
Speaker 1: address this because it's just one of those things that
Speaker 1: occurred to me. I don't mean to suggest that water
Speaker 1: it can hold on to certain attributes just because it
Speaker 1: came into contact with something, because that's not the case.
Speaker 1: I mean really, technically, we're all we're all running around
Speaker 1: drinking dino blood, right. Yeah, So that's your basic approach
Speaker 1: is essentially going through this multi step process to remove waste.
Speaker 1: And and by basic, we mean this is actually very complex,
Speaker 1: very expensive to build these facilities and uh and the
Speaker 1: result of of decades of research. There's filtering technique. There's
Speaker 1: actually if you want to see a more detailed approach
Speaker 1: to how this is done in a real system, there's
Speaker 1: a fun little documentary that's on YouTube. It's before Fawcett,
Speaker 1: after flush I believe his West. Yeah, yeah, you were
Speaker 1: talking about that. It's about the Chicago water system, which
Speaker 1: is phenomenal. They have like, at least at the time
Speaker 1: of the documentary, they had the world's largest water treatment
Speaker 1: facility and they get their their water from the Great
Speaker 1: Lake and uh, it's interesting. They have all these tunnels
Speaker 1: that are underneath the lake that allow lake water to
Speaker 1: go through. And it's a really cool documentary. It's like
Speaker 1: seven minutes long. So we'll link to it because, um
Speaker 1: if you want to see more of a step by
Speaker 1: step process and kind of see animations of what is
Speaker 1: going on the stuff that I just described, it has
Speaker 1: all of that. It's really good. But but yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so not not everywhere in the world has these these
Speaker 1: wonderful treatment facilities and um and it can be a
Speaker 1: huge problem for the spread of diseases. Um Uh. Like
Speaker 1: remember how I said there's estimates of two billion people
Speaker 1: in Asia without safe drinking water. There's an estimated additional
Speaker 1: three billion there without safe sanitation and water waste management. Right, So,
Speaker 1: on top of the fact that there are billions of
Speaker 1: people who don't have access to an adequate water or
Speaker 1: waste management system, there's an environmental concern with any type
Speaker 1: of water system, right. Well, anytime that you're moving around
Speaker 1: a large natural resource like water, you're you're gonna be
Speaker 1: You're gonna be screwing with the natural system of things, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, which which is on purpose and which is
Speaker 1: good because it lets people um survive, but bad and
Speaker 1: that you can really mess with the ecology of a
Speaker 1: local area. Yeah, you need to take in to consideration
Speaker 1: everything from the water that you're taking, Like wherever the
Speaker 1: reservoir happens to be, whether it's a lake or a
Speaker 1: river or even an artificial reservoir, where is that water
Speaker 1: coming from, how is it affecting the ecosystem of the
Speaker 1: area from which you are taking, And then everything from
Speaker 1: the amount of water that people are using, because water
Speaker 1: is not you know, you may have seen things on
Speaker 1: television or you know a little reminders in school about
Speaker 1: don't waste water. A lot of that has to do
Speaker 1: with not just the fact that there's you know, there's uh,
Speaker 1: it's a renewable resource, but there's only so much of
Speaker 1: it any particular region has at any particular time. It's
Speaker 1: also an energy concern because it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: energy to gather this water from the source, and even
Speaker 1: using gravity, we're still talking about having pumping stations things
Speaker 1: like that. So the more water you use, the more
Speaker 1: energy has to be uh consumed in order to continue
Speaker 1: that that supply of water. Right here in the US,
Speaker 1: I think that the e p A reported that, um,
Speaker 1: we use three or four percent of our countrywide energy
Speaker 1: getting water where it needs to go. And and that's
Speaker 1: that's on a national level, and that's only because most
Speaker 1: of that is dealt with by municipal systems, where water
Speaker 1: treatment is usually the largest consumer of energy without any
Speaker 1: given community. Right So, I mean, clearly there are a
Speaker 1: lot of concerns for using water wisely, and then of
Speaker 1: course the whole treatment process and how that water once
Speaker 1: treated as then introduced back into the environment. All of
Speaker 1: these things have an impact. And if the if the
Speaker 1: treatment facility isn't truly sophisticated, or if it's not adequate,
Speaker 1: then you could be making a catastrophic effect on your environment,
Speaker 1: which in turn can either directly affect the population that's
Speaker 1: getting the water in the first place or other populations
Speaker 1: that are downstream or nearby. Right. Yeah, this this can
Speaker 1: also get really political. Um yeah, in fact, even within
Speaker 1: the United States, it can get political. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds of crazy, especially to people who may live outside
Speaker 1: of the US and they think of it as a nation,
Speaker 1: but we're divided up into states obviously. And uh, here's
Speaker 1: a perfect example, Lauren and I. We live in Georgia.
Speaker 1: We have two states that border US that use very
Speaker 1: similar sources of water, the same source of water at
Speaker 1: least for certain regions, Alabama and Florida. They all are
Speaker 1: using water that is coming from come downstream from US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the Chattahoochee actually, and Alabama and Florida often are
Speaker 1: um competing for those resources along with Georgia. So if
Speaker 1: Georgia decides to do something on a state level that's
Speaker 1: going to affect that water source, it impacts these other states,
Speaker 1: and you get this kind of tension. This is within
Speaker 1: one country where yeah, yeah, and internationally it can get
Speaker 1: pretty messy. I just just for example, most of Iraq's
Speaker 1: water supply originates and rivers in Turkey, which means that
Speaker 1: for for Iraq to get the water that it needs,
Speaker 1: conservation efforts have to begin in a whole other country
Speaker 1: that they might not be agreeing with very much at
Speaker 1: the time. Right. So if you have one country that says,
Speaker 1: you know, well, we'll conserve as much as we need
Speaker 1: to for our needs, but why should we be considered,
Speaker 1: and why should we worry about your needs you're you
Speaker 1: don't you're not part of our country. That's sticky, that's
Speaker 1: that's you know. I mean obviously it raises up very
Speaker 1: tricky ethical questions, and you know, you may not be
Speaker 1: at all uh able to affect those the answers to
Speaker 1: those questions if you aren't in that particular country. So
Speaker 1: you know, it does get pretty sticky. I will say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a whole bunch of different problems that that
Speaker 1: really go on with uh, with with water and how
Speaker 1: we're going to kind of bring these old methods of
Speaker 1: getting it places and treating it into the future because
Speaker 1: you know, we're the population is growing. We're certainly not
Speaker 1: going to have less need for water anytime soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so some things that we can look into or things
Speaker 1: like using uh different approaches for agriculture, which would obviously
Speaker 1: put less of a demand on our water use. If
Speaker 1: we're using fresh water for agriculture, and we can come
Speaker 1: up with plants that either need less water, or we
Speaker 1: come up with farming techniques that don't use as much water.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, there there are other byproducts to this too, Right,
Speaker 1: If you have an enormous field that is treated with
Speaker 1: various types of herbicides, pesticides, that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: you're using massive amounts of water to distribute those you
Speaker 1: get run off of all those chemicals that can then
Speaker 1: enter the local water table and that can be a
Speaker 1: big problem. So, I mean you can see that this
Speaker 1: is not a simple system. It's very complex. Absolutely. And
Speaker 1: and also according to the e P, a um of
Speaker 1: water treated by water systems is lost to leaks um
Speaker 1: in some systems that can be as much as six
Speaker 1: The worldwide average is about twenty and and that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's a huge amount. All right, So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit. And you know, we've talked about the challenges
Speaker 1: in the state of the art as it is today,
Speaker 1: but there are people who are working on some pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff that could in theory really revolutionized water systems. Right. Oh, absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: some of some of the more some of the more
Speaker 1: down to earth. I'll cover those first methods. Some some
Speaker 1: researchers are talking about the simple act of diverting watershed
Speaker 1: of the physical area of land from which you would
Speaker 1: get your water. Right because because classically your your watershed
Speaker 1: is far away from a city, basically, um, nothing to
Speaker 1: do with your cities. But in in these are modern times,
Speaker 1: we've got so many more people living in urban areas
Speaker 1: and um, so much wasted water coming down in rainfall
Speaker 1: on these large urban areas that if we if we
Speaker 1: look at at just increasing the system capacity of cities
Speaker 1: to deal with that water by by replacing concrete with
Speaker 1: porous pavement, by adding more plant life to cities, by
Speaker 1: restoring wetlands, or or installing rain barrels and other building
Speaker 1: gray water management systems, right, Yeah, gray water is one
Speaker 1: of those things that can be incredibly useful for particular applications.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it's not something that you would necessarily say,
Speaker 1: let's hook this up to yeah, and then I'll drink
Speaker 1: and then I'll drink, or a bubbler if you prefer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gray water being um, the the basically clean wastewater that
Speaker 1: comes from mild householder or commercial applications. Right, And there's
Speaker 1: plenty of different uses we could put that to rather
Speaker 1: than using I mean, it really does water alan Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's really crazy to think that we have incredibly fresh
Speaker 1: water in our toilets. Yeah, that's that's one of those
Speaker 1: things that drives me completely. Just when you think that
Speaker 1: there are two billion people in Asia who do not
Speaker 1: have access to clean water, and we're using drinking water
Speaker 1: in our toilets. Yeah, so see, using gray water in
Speaker 1: a system like that could end up meaning that that
Speaker 1: water could be used in other applications. Obviously, the big
Speaker 1: problem with the two billion people in Asia is that
Speaker 1: they don't have the systems in place or the resources
Speaker 1: available to them. It's not just that the Earth has
Speaker 1: an x amount of fresh water that's evenly distributed across
Speaker 1: the entire planet, like we're saying, yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not the kind of thing where you know,
Speaker 1: if if you if you avoid flushing your toilet, that's
Speaker 1: not going to give water to the poor kids in China,
Speaker 1: like like it's yeah, it's like we said, it's a
Speaker 1: little more complicated than that. Okay, so that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in some communities are already doing a whole lot
Speaker 1: for that. We mentioned in in that in that listener
Speaker 1: mail from Valerie, she she had mentioned Las Vegas systems
Speaker 1: and they are using a lot of water reclamation in
Speaker 1: order to to to stretch the water as far as
Speaker 1: it will go because they're kind of in a desert. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not one of those areas where they've got, you know,
Speaker 1: huge reservoirs that are naturally occurring nearby. It's a little
Speaker 1: tricky and I don't know if you know this, but
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is kind of a big city. It's got
Speaker 1: a few people, a few people in it. I'll be
Speaker 1: there soon enough for ce. Yes, that's right, that's coming up.
Speaker 1: It's kind of exciting. Also, currently happening lots of new
Speaker 1: technology in recycling, purification, and desalination. Yeah, we we've seen
Speaker 1: things like the water reclamation technology that NASA has pioneered
Speaker 1: has been amazing. Like if you look at the stuff
Speaker 1: they have on the International Space Station. And it's not
Speaker 1: just NASA, obviously, there are other space organizations, European space organizations, uh,
Speaker 1: Russian space organizations that have all contributed to this kind
Speaker 1: of body of science and technology. But they really make
Speaker 1: water go as far as it possibly can with the
Speaker 1: cost of what dollars for a pound of stuff to
Speaker 1: send into space, right, you know, every every ounce counts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't wanna, you don't want to be constantly they're
Speaker 1: thirsty again, gotta lug up another hundred pounds of water
Speaker 1: go to the bank. No, it's it's you know, they
Speaker 1: have systems that recapture water from everything from the water
Speaker 1: vapor and their breath, the sweat, urine, things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, not all this water necessarily goes right back
Speaker 1: into drinking water either, but it's necessary for the system.
Speaker 1: So we can learn from that and use those same
Speaker 1: sort of technologies and various applications here on Earth, not
Speaker 1: all of them. Obviously. We're not gonna have giant water
Speaker 1: vapor uh condensers out there capturing everyone's breath, but probably
Speaker 1: probably not in most buildings. Um but I would I
Speaker 1: don't know, we might get one in here someday, but
Speaker 1: if we could, that would be that would be terrible
Speaker 1: and lovely. I feel like Robert would love a love
Speaker 1: an art project about that. Um but but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's lots of really interesting materials and membrane sciences, different
Speaker 1: electrical properties of different things. We talked about that a
Speaker 1: bunch in our forward thinking episode of desalination, which is
Speaker 1: of course, and I mean that is a nice solution
Speaker 1: to getting drinking water when you don't have any fresh
Speaker 1: water in your Yeah, and there we've also seen some
Speaker 1: cool filtration systems that can be used to purify water.
Speaker 1: If you have access to water but it's not pure,
Speaker 1: you can run it through these things. Dean Cayman worked
Speaker 1: on one. I know that Bill Gates is really behind
Speaker 1: technologies that are being developed for developing nations that may
Speaker 1: have problems getting clean water, and you just you pour
Speaker 1: this stuff in on one end and again gravity pulls
Speaker 1: the water through the various systems until at the end
Speaker 1: of it you get potable drinking water, which is pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal stuff. Now, these are are small, They're meant for
Speaker 1: small communities. They're not you know, something that's going to
Speaker 1: support an enormous city, and you might need multiple units
Speaker 1: depending upon how large the population of that area is.
Speaker 1: But it's really promising. But but Lauren, I want to
Speaker 1: know about a crazy kind of science fiction e E E
Speaker 1: approach to totally renovating the water system. Get anything for me?
Speaker 1: I do. In fact, um, have have you heard of
Speaker 1: four D printing? Oh? My gosh, four deep printing. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing a devastatingly handsome bald Man talk about that
Speaker 1: on a video not to long ago. He's kind of narcissistic, though,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's okay, it's okay. When you look
Speaker 1: that good, it's completely justified. There there was an episode,
Speaker 1: there's another separate episode of forward Thinking that was all
Speaker 1: about forty printing and and this is kind of a
Speaker 1: kitchy catchphrase, um, but it's we're talking about self assembly really.
Speaker 1: Um So, So okay, M I T has a self
Speaker 1: assembly lab that's being run by one Skylar Tippets. Great name,
Speaker 1: it is a great name. Um he's he's an architect
Speaker 1: and and comps I and artist kind of dude. And
Speaker 1: um in in M I t S word, self assembly
Speaker 1: is a process by which disordered parts build an ordered
Speaker 1: structure through local interaction. And so what they're really interested
Speaker 1: in here is is using material science and biological science
Speaker 1: to create mostly analog devices that can react to changing situations. Right, So,
Speaker 1: and and usually it means that you're adding some form
Speaker 1: of energy or introducing some new element to this material,
Speaker 1: which will then undergo a change in shape or form. Right.
Speaker 1: This is a really proof of concept kind of stage.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're there at this at this very basic
Speaker 1: like they've built a long tube that, when dropped in
Speaker 1: water well morph to form the letters M I T. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they had they had one flat piece of it
Speaker 1: looks like just plastic, but when you put water on it,
Speaker 1: it would form itself into a cube. Um. Yes, you
Speaker 1: know you could watch the video and then you see
Speaker 1: that it's sped up by about eight times, and you
Speaker 1: realize this is a gradual process. It's really slow. I
Speaker 1: mean all of this is thanks to a multi material
Speaker 1: form of three D printing. Um. And the four D
Speaker 1: in in the fourth dimension and in the four D
Speaker 1: title is time. Um. But but but so so multi
Speaker 1: material three D printing. Since different materials can have different
Speaker 1: water absorption properties, Um, you know you can. You can
Speaker 1: build them so that they will squish up in different ways. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got you've got an interesting approach where you've got
Speaker 1: this material that can actually react to changing such a waans.
Speaker 1: So if you engineer it so that it behaves a
Speaker 1: particular way under a particular se circumstances, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of applications that you could put this to, including
Speaker 1: completely revolutionizing a water system. Yeah. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: anything is huge as as a water system is a
Speaker 1: really long way off from from a cute little tube
Speaker 1: that spells out a cute little thing over of course
Speaker 1: of several minutes. Um. But but you know, imagine a
Speaker 1: pipe that changes shape to accommodate spikes in in in
Speaker 1: watershed or water waste or frozen water. Right. Soe now
Speaker 1: this would be amazing because, like we had said over
Speaker 1: and over again, the water systems we have have formed
Speaker 1: over several decades, and they're not uniform at all, and
Speaker 1: they you know, some of the pipes are different sizes
Speaker 1: than other pipes, and you know, you might have it
Speaker 1: where certain parts of a city may have trouble meeting
Speaker 1: the water needs of that particular part of the city
Speaker 1: compared to others just because the infrastructure doesn't really support
Speaker 1: it anymore. If you had pipes that could adjust to
Speaker 1: the right to the to the level of demand, then
Speaker 1: if the population fluctuated, if it went, you know, got
Speaker 1: bigger or smaller, the pipes themselves, in theory, could end
Speaker 1: up adjusting themselves to meet whatever the new demand was
Speaker 1: to create the optimum water pressure for the amount of
Speaker 1: people that it needed to serve um Or what about
Speaker 1: a pipe that could shift itself to self repair damage.
Speaker 1: And even more freaky than that, which is already amazing,
Speaker 1: the idea of you don't have to worry so much
Speaker 1: about maintenance because the pipes maintain themselves. They won't really
Speaker 1: break because they can just move bits around. It's another
Speaker 1: thing that I think is amazing is this idea of
Speaker 1: an undulating pipe. Now this is way off into science
Speaker 1: fiction future, right, absolutely, but but the the idea of
Speaker 1: this is that the pipe can undulate to push water
Speaker 1: through itself. So in other words, you don't need pumping stations.
Speaker 1: You don't even need to worry about gravity anymore. You've
Speaker 1: got pipes that can change their shape and propel the
Speaker 1: water through them, providing the water pressure you need. And
Speaker 1: it's all built into of the material itself. You don't
Speaker 1: have any electronic parts, you don't have any generators. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just doing it on its own because of the
Speaker 1: way that it was constructed. And that's really what I
Speaker 1: find phenomenal. It's not like there's some tiny electronic component
Speaker 1: inside this stuff. No, it's literally the way it was built. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just because it was built this way, it will
Speaker 1: react you know, in X way when why happens because
Speaker 1: in some cases it's things like kinetic energy, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you know, you might have a sheet of this
Speaker 1: stuff and if you throw it on the ground, it
Speaker 1: turns into a chair over the course of like minutes.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think the connect ones are a little
Speaker 1: bit quicker. Yeah they can be. Yeah, but that would
Speaker 1: be you know, that's the kind of stuff we're talking
Speaker 1: about now. Granted again this is sci fi science stuff.
Speaker 1: Does have a really great Ted talk that will link to.
Speaker 1: But but you'll see in this Ted talk he presents
Speaker 1: a couple examples of what they're doing right at this
Speaker 1: very moment, and it is much less impressive than we've
Speaker 1: just made it sound, um, but the potential assuming that
Speaker 1: we can get it to work. So I'm really looking
Speaker 1: forward to seeing what what what people wind up doing
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, I'm sure we're only you know, thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty years away, right right around the same time
Speaker 1: that we hit the singularity and right around the time
Speaker 1: you know, singularity robot uprising and undulating pipes. They're all
Speaker 1: going to come on a Tuesday, So we'll be recording
Speaker 1: forward thinking, assuming we're all still around at that point.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got no plans. So anyway, this was
Speaker 1: one of those topics I thought was really interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: it had a historical element to it that was fun
Speaker 1: to talk about. It has a real impact on us today,
Speaker 1: right now, and the promise of technology in the future
Speaker 1: has at least the potential to make it a phenomenally
Speaker 1: interesting uh system that we could see, you know, in
Speaker 1: a few decades. Assuming that that this is everything's working out.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's a lot of work that we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: but sure even just just just big data and monitoring techniques. Um,
Speaker 1: getting everyone to work kind of together on this problem. UM,
Speaker 1: I think is going to be huge satellite data to
Speaker 1: to watch stuff. I mean, satellites can can detect changes
Speaker 1: in gravity that therefore detect changes in groundwater concentration. That's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. Um. I didn't detect any changes in gravity,
Speaker 1: but I only saw the film once, so I have
Speaker 1: to see it at least one more time before I
Speaker 1: could tell you what it changed. So, if you guys
Speaker 1: have anything to to say to us about this or
Speaker 1: other topics, why don't you write to us our email
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Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really
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