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
The basic idea of a lock in a canal is to change the elevation of a boat to continue its journey. Put a toy boat in the bathtub, slowly fill the tub, the boat rises with the water level. Drain the tub, the boat lowers with the water level
So a boat coming into say, the Panama Canal, they enter the first lock. It closes behind them and starts filling with water. The boat floats, so it rises with the rising water level. Once it reaches the height of the next lock, it opens, and the boat proceeds forward. It continues this until it hits the top, in Panama’s case, Gatun Lake. On the way out, it does the same in reverse. The lock drains slowly, lowering the water level and lowering the boat.
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