When you have pipes running through your homes or a work site it's easy to take them for granted.
Pipes are something that have always just 'been there' and until something goes wrong and one bursts we seldom question how they work or recognize just how important they are.
Pipes of course work differently from most other things around the home.
For one they carry water or gas rather than electricity, and for another they aren't powered by anything themselves.
Whereas most things that operate around our home are electrical or mechanical, pipes are simple tubes that somehow manage to keep our home heated.
So what's causing the movement? And how do we know pipes aren't just going to fill up? The answer is of course pressure, and this is something that it quite interesting once you look into it.
Here we will examine how the scientific laws of pressure govern the behaviour of our pipes and prevent them from getting blocked while keeping our home heated and our baths full.
How Does Pressure Work? Pressure is the term given to describe the density of particles in any area.
In other words, if you were to stuff a bag full of a sleeping bag then this would be high pressure, while putting an apple in there would not.
Only pressure is generally used to describe either liquid or gas particles and how tightly they are packed into small spaces.
If you blow up a balloon then it will gradually increase in pressure because there are so many particles packed tightly into the small area.
This is measured in PSI.
What makes pressure interesting is that particles are naturally inclined to spread out and cover any space evenly.
In other words then, if you take your mouth off of that balloon then the air would rush out until the pressure inside the balloon was the same as the pressure in the room around it.
This is called 'equalization'.
Now when it comes to water in pipes, whether we're talking about mining pipes or pipes around the home, this is something that can be used to our advantage.
If you fill one end of a pipe up with water you see - and there's already water in that pipe - then all the water will naturally spread out as much as it can (while staying bonded together) and take up as much space as it can.
Thus the water will rush to lower pressure areas and this means that it can be 'pushed' uphill by adding more water into the pipes.
Because pressure changes when heat changes, this can also be used to sort hot and cold water, and to make the water from a boiler travel through your radiators.
Equalization is actually responsible for the way that a lot of things work.
For instance the shape of a wing on an aeroplane is such that it pushes the wind over the top of it.
This then means that there is an 'absence' of air particles underneath the wing, and the air underneath rushes up to fill that void.
This then pushes the wing from underneath and provides us with what's called 'lift'.