Tippy Tap Plus Piping
Students discover the physics behind piping systemsCopyright World Health Organization http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/monitoring/water.pdf
The Tippy Tap hand-washing station is an inexpensive and effective device used extensively in the developing world. One shortcoming of the homemade device is that it must be manually refilled with water and therefore is of limited use in high-traffic areas. In this activity, student teams design, prototype and test piping systems to transport water from a storage tank to an existing Tippy Tap hand-washing station, thereby creating a more efficient hand-washing station. Through this example service-learning engineering project, students learn basic fluid dynamic principles that are needed for creating efficient piping systems.
Humans have been creating engineering solutions to the transport of water for thousands of years. This may take the form of aqueducts, pipelines, canals or tunnels. Transporting water is very energy intensive, so engineers who create water moving systems are focused on achieving high efficiency. In piping systems, they consider hydrostatic head, friction and turbulence so as to hinder the flow as little as possible, and transport water with a minimum expenditure of energy. Working with people and their specific community needs to design low-cost hand-washing technology is especially important in rural communities with access to fewer resources and energy supplies.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Calculate pressure, velocity and elevation in a simple piping system.
- Apply Bernoulli's equation to simple pipe systems.
- Perform simple estimates of head loss due to pipe fittings.
- Explain how to conserve energy in piping systems and what contributes to energy losses.