Thanks Physics...And My Mom For Saving Us A Lot Of Time And Trouble

We're cleaning out our basement. That's a big task normally--lots of packing and moving of boxes, that is after you've sorted out things you want to keep and thing you don't.

Which brings me to two huge plastic water barrels.

We wanted to keep the barrels, but not the water.

I remember filling them up. We snaked a hose through a basement window and turned on the water, but we couldn't do that to empty them--water doesn't run uphill...

Unless you apply physics.

I remember growing up when we irrigated our garden and trees by siphoning water from a ditch. The ditch was behind our house and most of what we watered as downhill, so no problem. But, we had cherry trees that were several feet above the driveway. As a kid I knew water would reach the driveway, but how would it go up to water the trees? My mom explained the concept of siphoning. 

As long as the water source is higher than where it empties, and there's no air in the tube/hose, the water will drain, even if the tube/hose goes higher than the source. I was counting on this concept to work in order to drain the 100 gallons of water we needed gone.

I filled up a hose, made sure the draining end was lower than the barrels, and shoved the end into the barrel. I checked the exit and we had draining water.

Success!

I could have repeated the process for the second barrel, but instead we used a pump to pump water from the first barrel into the second and had both barrels siphon away.

It was fun remembering something my mother taught me to help us out.

I Mean...Who Doesn't Love Model Trains?

Another day, another basement treasure. This time, I knew what was in this particular crate.

My dad's trains.

Of course, not everything he once owned were in the box. I remember a huge (it was huge to me...) custom-built wooden display complete with tunnels and buildings. It consisted of two equal sections, at least six feet by four feet each. It sat in our basement, never used, because the man who owned the display died.

I still wonder what happened to that thing. There are times when I think it would be cool to have it, but you'd have to dedicate an entire room just for the display and the trains for which it was built.

But, there is one crate that contains the model trains that my dad loved, one crate that stayed in my parent's basement until my mom passed away and we moved the crate to our basement where it's resided for the past twelve years.

Like the display, I always thought it would be fun to one day set up the train set, see if it still works. It would be a way of honoring my dad, enjoying the things he enjoyed. The set is old and if it works after all these decades would be a miracle. Then again, it most likely worked when it was boxed and put away, so why not now?

There's another option for the old set and the cars. I can sell them or donate them to a thrift store to bring joy to someone else--maybe even for generations to come. Now that the basement is getting de-cluttered, there's room for me to unpack the crate, set up a portion of the track and see if we can get the thing to work. I think my dad would approve.