That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.
Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.
The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.
Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.
Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.
The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.
Fun fact: The MAX lifting capacity of that bucket is 100Tons
Yet, ancient Egyptians inexplicably lifted stones weighing 1,000Tons - a staggering 10X HEAVIER than this modern behemoth can handle ๐คฏ
@elonmusk Then develop a better way to harness the suns energy. Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System didn't work properly and still needed a gas line to operate at night.Nuclear is the answer right now, but I hope solar technology is the future, the only question is how, and prove it.
@vortidude@Mark_Glendening@elisabethinwa@BrilynHollyhand Hey, that's not the right math. Say a pill cost $1 to make but big pharma marks it up to $500 per pill... That's a 500 percent increase... So in this scenario big pharma would sell at say 10 dollars per pill, that would be a 10 percent mark up. I guess go back to elementary ๐ซ
@MomsPostingLs@MaryTilesTexas Of course that guy doesn't know any women in construction. He's never swung a 9 pound hammer in his life. Women make great welders, just trained one last month. Refineries, Tanks, Presser vessels, pipe, structural steel, and power houses have women welders. A steady increase