I cannot for the life of me understand how they work on a canal for example. Please dumb it down as much as possible
In: Engineering
There’s two different water levels
If a boat is on the high side, the lock is filled to that water level, the lock is opened, the boat enters, the lock is closed, the water is drained to the lower level, the other end opens, and the boat can continue.
If the boat is on the low side, we can do the exact same thing in reverse. The water is drained down to the lower level, it opens, the boat enters, it closes, it’s filled, so the water raises, it opens, and the boat can continue on the high side.
This can be dome with just two valves. One to drain water from the high side to the lock, and one to drain water from the lock to the low side.
You can save water with pumps or an additional reservoir, but water is always working its way to the low side every time you use the lock
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