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
You got two doors that separates the canal into 3 bits – a high bit, a low bit, and a bit in the middle that can go up and down by pumping water in or letting it out.
If your in the low bit, they let water out of the mid bit until it’s at the same level, you float past the door and close it. Water then comes from the high bit to fill this bit until it’s at the same level, the second door opens, and you can float out onto the high bit. Going the other way is just reversing it.
Canals get topped up by allowing rivers to drain into them in places, they also have overflows in other places to stop them overfilling. These replace any water lost in the locks, so the canals stay full.
A lock can only go a few metres. If you need to go further up or down you can have lots of locks, called a flight – like this one near Fort William in Scotland called [Neptune’s Ladder](https://i1.wp.com/highlands2hammocks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ariel-view-of-the-neptunes-staircase3.jpg?fit=1500%2C1000&ssl=1) or if you really want to go for it, [The Falkirk Wheel](https://wikitravel.org/upload/shared/b/b1/Falkirk_Wheel_Operation.JPG) shows how to replace lots of locks with on mind boggling wheel.
[It’s best seen in motion with an explanation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHO9gARac-w). I live near both, I’,m very lucky.
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