h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A WATERWHEEL IS CORRECT!!!!

Geggs +3

Now d'yall want to have a guess at it's name or shall I just call a halt to this mammoth QI experiment before you all do yourselves an injury?

Put us out of our misery!


It is gonna be an Arabic name we have ZERO chance of guessing!




GT

Okay - this will take me a little while to score and write up since there is much that remains mysterious that has to be explained so give me a little while but check back.


This QI is formally Closed.

Well done everyone!

Chat amongst yourselves.

Well. I've been out of the house for most of the day, but was keeping track of this thread on my Blackberry, and am I glad I did!

I'm kinda surprised, though obviously incredibly glad, that no one else thought of a wheel after I suggested a water mill.

This has been good fun though - 10 out of 10 I'd say Clive. Definately need to have another sound round. How about picture rounds too?


Geggs

Just imagine if you hadn't - we might still all be hard it!

It was with a pause that I said no to watermill for while it is a waterwheel in application it uses the power of the water-flow to turn the mill whereas this device uses the power of the water to turn itself and thus raise water up to a height from where it can be redistributed via aqueducts.

10/10 - high praise indeed!

I've just finished typing in all the scores (and I know who has won!!)

I'm just now turning to writing up the all-important explanation...

After the last clue I thought of a water wheel, but remembered the water mill was a no (and anyway, I was too lazy to look up (Wasserrad).

Well done, Clive. Lucky me to have been still awake when you posted it last night.

There have been picture rounds in the past. I know Malabarista did a few and I've done one (Contiguity and Ubiquity)

<./>F7180006?thread=7048684</.>

- a massive 29 posts long!

Ah right. Before I came into the game, that was. I've only been playing since last May.


Geggs

I think the backlog is well-worth reading, we've had some great QI games down the years.

I was idly considering, if I could make it to this years London meet organising some kind of real life QI game sponsored by the QI society.

Just an idea...

10/10 indeed, Clive Good one

>>...London meet organising some kind of real life QI game sponsored by the QI society<<
Methinks you'd need 1:1 moderators!

Almost done with the write up - hang on ....

The subject of this QI are the waterwheels AKA "Norias" of Hama - a city in Syria.

They are the largest preserved remaining waterwheels of this size and type - including the massive 20m wheel on the banks of the along the Orontes River.


The Shadoof is a counterweighted lifting arm which can raise water from a river or aquifer which can be used to irrigate fields etc but it suffers from the fact of manual operation and that the water has to be transported.

The direct engineering predecessor of the Noria is the Saqiya - a series of buckets on on a chain wheich are lowered into the water and are then raised up again.

The 13th century Polymath and engineering genius Al Jaziri (We've met him before in one of my QIs 'The Double-Action Suction Pump' - a machine which he modestly called Machine number 5.) - an earlier prototype model of 5 was machine number 3.

This was a waterwheel which turned the rotary motion through a series of wooden-toothed gears up a tower 10 metres which rotated a pulley that raised and lowered the chain with the buckets - which would deposit the water into an aquaduct. One machine in particular - believed to be based on Al Jaziri's design was still supplying water to a Syrian hospital as recently as 1970!

Norias themselves have a pedigree that can be traced back to the 1st century where the Roman Vitruvius describes their operation (Vitruvius later further immortalised in the 'ideal proportioned man' drawn by Da Vinci)

The Noria or 'snorter' aka 'perpheral pot-wheel' works like this: It is a large wheel placed into a river and affixed with paddles that drive it around. On the inner rim situated at angles are pots which scoop up the water and tip it out at the apex of the turn.

They require only the power of a small stream but work exceedingly well in large, powerful rivers.

They are described in China as 'Tube Machines' in 1313CE.
http://flic.kr/p/9jpvSx

and there is evidence of their use during world war 2 where they are photographed workking in groups in the Chengdu region in Sichuan.

http://flic.kr/p/9jsCiq


The Norias at Hama however are widely considered to be the most splendid (surviving) representations of the technology which permitted vast irrigation projects and water distribution, including the massive 20m disc.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Al-naurah.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Hama-3_norias.jpg

This massive Noria the the al-Mohamadiyya is capable of raising 95 litres of water a minute from the river and supplies the Mosque. It and it's aqueduct was constructed in the 14th century and restored in the late 1970s.

Today it isn't used to ferry water up from the river (so the buckets have all been removed) but it is kept turning - and this is the moment you've all been waiting for, as it turns this ancient and massive machine groans and vibrates - and this is the source of the sound you can hear. All the whirring, clicking, modulation and resonance is the waterwheel, wheeling.

I have some video where you can see and hear it in operation.

It really is noisy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY4eVDPg8_E

This gives you a good view of the Aqueduct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hqe32Mu_TY

They go into the interior of the surrounding structures part-way through this one, and you can here the complex harmonics involved. (reminds me of something you'd see at Alton Towers!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1meWUfXZP7o&NR=1

-------------------
Solution to the Title-Clue

QI - "Perfection lay within, or I am already here?"
QI - "Perfection lay withi noria m already here?"

The answer was staring you in the face all along!

Plato held that the circle was a perfect shape

The 'wheel' hidden in the title has a root in the Proto-Indo-European langauge *k(w)e-k(w)lo - from which you later can derive 'kyklos' and then later cyclical and cylinder and circle and so on.

and That, as they say, is it.

Fin.

QI - Perfection lay within, or I am already here? (AKA: The Norias of Hama)
------------------------




Correct (+3)
------------------------
Geggs (380)
- A Waterwheel.


QI Bonus (+6)
------------------------
MMF (144)
- The Woodpecker and the Flagpole and Kew

Geggs (214)
- The Central Park Sound Tunnel.


DGI Bonus (+1)
------------------------
Bel (13)
- "Is it outside somewhere?"

Geggs (45)
- Salvation lay 'within'

Shagbark (77)
- "man made / generate electricity?"

MMF (113)
- "At ground level, comes in various sizes.

Shagbark (114)
- "A windmill"

Gandalf'sTwin (195)
- "It is roughly circular"

LogicusTracticus (210)
- "Water-tower for the old steam train operated by a windmill-type mechanism."

LogicusTracticus (210)
- "resonating water pipes"

Pebble (220)
"I'm glad I don't have to live near it."

Gandalf'sTwin (318)
- "empty bottles"

Gandalf'sTwin (343)
- "something used in the past."

Gandalf'sTwin (343)
- "A vent of some sort to carry away vapours or fumes."

Gandalf'sTwin (346)
- "A wind-powered Archimedean Screw for drawing water from Aquifers."

Gandalf'sTwin (346)
- "Found in the Middle East."

Gandalf'sTwin (357)
- "Involves an Aqueduct of some kind."

Rod (373)
- "River-powered"

Gandalf'sTwin (374)
- "Water-powered."

Klaxon (-5)
------------------------
Bel (3)
- "A swarm of bees."

MMF (21)
- "Alpenhorn"

Pedro (33)
- "The Sound of The Universe"

Shagbark (59)
- "Didgeridoo"

Hygienic Dispenser (136)
- "Flagpole in a high wind."

LogicusTracticus (156)
- "Musical Sand Dunes."

Bob Stafford (249)
- "A suspension bridge."

Elf Bonus (+2)
------------------------

Clive.



Total to be added or subtracted.
------------------------

Geggs +10
Gandalf'sTwin +8
MMF +2
Clive +2
Pebble +1
Logicus -3
Shagbark -3
Bel -4
Pedro -5
Hygienic Dispenser -5
Bob Stafford -5


Geggs gets some some scented candles and a warm bath and lots of well-deserved peace and quiet way from all this din in which to enjoy her massive +10 victory!!

Some ear plugs and a chance to ride the Noria and dive off the top into the river for GT, celebrating as they are with +8!

Careening through the canyons and rapids in a canoe built just for two, MMF joins I - your humble QI researcher - in exploring the Backwaters of Beyond for the ruins of mysterious ancient cultures and their Quiet Interesting creations. +2 each.

But, holed below the water-line, subsiding fast and swept downstream to a watery end: Bob, Hygienic Dispenser and Pedro, sink without a trace - 5 each.

Excuse me, but HER? I'm a bloke, me. Honest.


Geggs

Oops.

How did I make that error??

Does h2g2 have an 'edit' button yet?

Sorry Clive, nope!!


GT

I think... I'm going to stop talking now - before I get myself into any further trouble.

New QI up and running!!


GT

I've done my bit for the craft.

I've a tonne of coursework to plough through this week so I shall be around, probably observing..

Best of luck with it GT.