Re: Water pump information

[Richard Hake <rrhake@EARTHLINK.NET>]

In her PhysLrnR post of 1 Feb 2002 13:03:04-0500, titled "Water pump
information," Marina Milner wrote:

MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER
I would like to ask for your help. One of my students is working on the
exhibit at the NJ Museum of Agriculture at Rutgers. The exhibit deals with
simple machines. He is looking for information about how simple water pump
works (including the pictures). The pump he is interested in has a lever arm
(I know I have seen those in villages in Russia) and can be simply operated
by pulling it up and down. The web site "How stuff works". . .
<http://www.howstuffworks.com/>. . . does not talk about this
particular one. If you know where we can find this information,
please e-mail us.
MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER-MILNER

Since others may be interested in water pumps and/or the "how things
work" approach to physics education, I'm taking the liberty (please
forgive me) of cross posting this to discussion lists with archives
at:

PhysLrnR <http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/physlrnr.html>,
Phys-L <http://mailgate.nau.edu/archives/phys-l.html>,
Physhare <http://lists.psu.edu/archives/physhare.html>.


Section 3.2 "Water Distribution" in the great book by Louis
Bloomfield (1997), contains a good treatment of water pumps,
including a picture of one with "a lever arm . . (that). . . can be
simply operated by pulling it up and down."

For a list of about 25 how-things-work-type books type "How Things
Work" into the title slot at <http://www.amazon.com/> / "Books" /
"Search" (where "/" means "click on the following text").

H. Richard Crane's (1992) well-known "How Things Work" contains an
interesting section on blood pumps in "How to Pump Blood without a
Heart." BTW, Crane
<http://www.physics.lsa.umich.edu/department/directory/bio.asp?ID=70>
is well-known to most nuclear, atomic, and elementary-particle
physicists, and should be (but is not) familiar to ALL physics
teachers and physics education researchers. For a referenced
discussion of Crane's pioneering work in physics education and
classroom communication systems see Hake (1999).

For a cognitive scientist's explanation of "why things DON'T work"
check out Norman (1988, 1993). For an engineer's explanation of "why
things DON'T work" see Petroski (1994).

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (where simple answers to
  simple questions are rarely given)
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>


REFERENCES
Bloomfield, L.A. 1997. "How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday
Life." John Wiley. For related sites see
<http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/>,
<http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/journal/>, and
<http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/related_sites.html>. For a review
see Rothschild (1999).

Crane, H.R. 1992. "How Things Work" (A Collection of "How Things
Work" Columns from "The Physics Teacher," 1983-1991.  American
Association of Physics Teachers.

Hake, R.R. "Re: Is ClassTalk the gold standard? An Historical
Footnote" PhysLrnR post of 28 Mar 1999 14:39:52-0800, online at the
unbelievably long and awkward URL (Dewey - what gives with Boise
State listserv administrators??)
<http://listserv.boisestate.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9903&L=physlrnr&P=R5020&X=1677EF7661221F1FB5&Y=rrhake@earthlink.net>.

Norman, D.A. 1988. "The Design of Everyday Things." Doubleday.

Norman, D.A. 1993. "Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human
Attributes in the Age of the Machine." Perseus Books.

Petroski, H. 1994. "Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and
Judgment in Engineering" Cambridge University Press.

Rothschild, R.E. Review of "How Things Work: The Physics of Everyday Life."
Am. J. Phys. 67(4):359.