Create Your Hotel Bill Maker for Engineering Effortlessly

Hotel bill maker for Engineering

it's one of the most striking buildings in the world in its short life its distinctive shape has made it an icon for dubai recognize the world over it's the burj al-arab this is the tallest atrium in the world 182 metres high and that's just the beginning of the superlatives in one of the most opulent hotels in the universe there's enough gold and marble in here to make a wrapper look dowdy but behind the bling are some truly remarkable engineering achievements and they wouldn't have been possible without the children's game of jacks [Music] an engine cam the pages of a phone book [Music] a revolution in fire hose design look at that and the camera flash i've seen the point that it's a potential problem [Music] obviously you don't usually see this bit but this is how i start every day's work this is how we do things arriving by helicopter is par for the cause here thank you i'm only doing it to blend in as i'm about to check in thank you to check out one of the most distinctive architectural achievements in the world lovely thank you would you like some out of it i'd love some thank you cheers inside the sweets really are luxurious cocoons sheltering you from the desert outside there really is no sand in here unless of course if you really want it i'm sure room service could oblige and then whilst your bags are being unpacked for you somewhere in your vast suite you can stride around and look out over the whole of dubai but perhaps as importantly the whole of dubai can look back at the hotel because this place was designed right from the start to be an icon [Music] in the last 20 years dubai has shot upwards and outwards looking to find its fortune through business and tourism oil was discovered in the early 60s but people here know it won't last forever the iconic burj al-arab is part of dubai's planned future after oil the architects on the project however were inspired by dubai's past once upon a time dubai's wealth came from the sea where they harvested pearls and this building's distinctive shape recalls that history that curve is inspired by dows there's traditional sailing boats had applied these waters since ancient times [Music] making an iconic building look like a ship was only part of the challenge the architects wanted something more they needed a statement solution but put your building 300 meters out to see on its own tailor-made private island because it's not going to be cheap or easy engineers had to make an island big and solid enough to hold a quarter of a million ton tower [Music] most of all they had to protect it from the sea and the power of the waves [Music] even this placid-looking gulf can have a dangerous temper which could easily wash away a man-made island back in the uk i'm going to attempt to show how even a relatively small amount of water can do a surprising amount of damage i'm going to create an artificial wave the man in charge of sea defenses at the burj al-arab was mike mcnichols and these things can be pretty powerful yeah you know in the right circumstances at the right speed they can just act like a solid yeah smashing into whatever's there [Music] this plate glass will test the destructive power of our wave and don't think that this glass is a pushover it's 10 mil thick it's the safety stuff they use in tall buildings to stop people falling out it's more than twice as thick as normal window glass [Music] this is going to represent our wave it's a ton of water but it needs one more thing to be like a true wave you need some you know a bit of speed to get this thing going just like away pushing through there our wave will be set in motion by gravity and explosives well after you're like this is very subtle at the bottom of the bag is sort of a loop of decor explosive which will explode immediately and at that point there will be no bottom on the bag so all of this water the whole lot will just fall out in one big solid lump and that's more like a well that's more like it richard yeah well to complete this demonstration of the power of a lump of water i've i've got this it's a sort of industrial dining table with the glass top to give it its full title what happens we'll position the bag above there on the crane fire the explosives bang no bottom in the bag all of the water comes down in one go on to there and well we'll see what happens part of me thinks even in a solid lump the water will get here and then just sort of pour around the sides and the biggest problem we'll have is a puddle you'll see it's going to punch through that glass all right well i'm going to make a suggestion whatever happens let's watch it from over there now i've always thought of water as kind of soft stuff which flows around things sure in a high pressure jet is good for cleaning the car but a cubic meter of it falling onto thick plate glass ah the box really can't hear a thing there nice loud cake down sorry nice load cake down and press the button okay i'm gonna do this this is it for real here we go here comes a wave stand by in five four three two one well that was quite a big bang thank you for the big bang that's really well you can see the thickness of the glass now it's 10 mil thick you can stand on that our ton of water only fell a couple of meters and it still had huge destructive power compared to the power of the waves in the gulf however it is a drop in the ocean the biggest waves that batter the artificial island can deliver hundreds of tons of force each wave can be the equivalent of 130 small cars crashing into it so how do you protect your island from the extreme forces of the waves i think we'll take our inspiration richard from this little group of jacksons so these are jacks now um forgive me but it seems like quite a leap because how do they take the energy out of the way well this is more a modern version of the jack these things interlock together so the principle here is these shapes interlock and the space between them the water swirls within them and loses its energy so it's these holes yeah the holes it's nothing creates something holes are the answer well sort of poles were first used in revolutionary jack-shaped sea defenses created by south african harbour engineers they saw a local version of jax being played and fascinated by how the jacks interlocked successfully redesigned the harbour defenses for east london almost all coastal defenses still rely on this idea of holes including the berger wrap creating a furniture protection system inspired by the sea defenses used to protect the hotel in which spaces are the secret ingredient instead of trying to stop waves dead with a wall the idea was to create a series of spaces and holes that absorb the energy of the sea and we're going to see if the same principle will protect my spare dining table it will be the holes doing the work i hope we need to clear off out of the way and let's do it again only this time my table will survive probably it's your theory i know our homemade defenses will use the holes in the tires to redirect the water it will swish around and should fall harmlessly at the bottom all right i have every faith let's give it a go if we've done our homework right this will save the glass just as it saves the burj al-arab's man-made island if we're ready in five four three two one this is one of those occasions when just from seeing something you suddenly really understand it because you can see the breakwater break that big lump of water up into just eddies and swirls and bits and it really was the holes doing the work the holes did all the work that effect a protected table a protected island protected hotel not that my table isn't important in dubai the burj al-arab engineers used exactly the same principle for breaking up waves except they used concrete not all tyres [Music] their defenses create a smooth elegant and uniform shape suitable for keeping a world-class hotel's head above water the holes are so good at taking the energy out of waves that the island could be built at just seven and a half meters above sea level keeping the island relatively low allows the architects to continue the illusion of a boat on the water but what i think is fascinating is how the architects completed the boat itself inside the sea defenses those are just the outer shell of the island they needed to fill the middle in with something and they chose sand i guess it's not like it's in short supply around here but call me old-fashioned i've never thought of sand as the ideal material to make firm foundations for a building especially one that size the burj al-arab is 321 metres high slightly taller than the eiffel tower how does it possibly stand on sand without keeling over in the first stiff breeze through a remarkably simple scientific principle in fact skin friction is well it's exactly what it sounds like it's the friction between the skin the surfaces of objects if i rub my hands together friction generates heat i can feel it now ordinarily skin friction is it's there but it's pretty easily overcome two pages together i can feel the friction between them but there's not a lot of it however if i multiply that effect by as many times as there are pages in these directions let's see what happens i'm going to interleave them page by page one two skin friction is one of the factors that keep the burj alarad standing tall mind you i think they built the hotel in less time than it's taking me to do this there we go all done now ing to the theory the effects of skin friction should have been magnified by as many times as there are interfaces between the pages that i've interleaved it took a while i didn't know much else on this afternoon anything is knowing how long it took i'm reluctant to test it but i'm going to how tough is it i'm pulling as hard as i possibly can there's no glue that is just skin friction there's no way can i pull those apart i mean that is i understand i'm trying to catch i need to try harder okay this should be more like it obviously skin friction already doing well just to hold this shackle on remember nothing holding these together just the friction between the pages right lift it please how good is skin fix i mean really how good okay time to demonstrate if nothing else my faith in science yeah skin friction that's all that's holding me up and the way to that shackle remember no pins in there no tape no nails nothing just friction [Music] and friction is also one of the answers to building on unstable material even sand otherwise the enormous tower would just topple over the secret was to use reinforced concrete pile foundations which are like long nails driven into the ground they work using skin friction to keep the building in place even in loose sand to show how strong pile foundations can be a simple demonstration jar of uncooked rice and a knife put knife into rice that's something called skin friction in action [Music] skin friction is strong enough to support a 320 meter tall tower on sand there are nine and a half kilometers of concrete piles board 43 meters into the sand under the hotel to keep it upright and safe think of each pile as a page in the directory everyone makes the bond stronger combined they make the sand as solid as a rock and keep the building standing tall in dubai temperatures can reach a blistering 49 degrees celsius and that heat posed a challenge for engineers and architects working with steel metal like most materials expands when you heat it up think about if you've got the lid stuck on a jar warm it up a bit and the metal lid will expand and you can free it that's a good thing but if you're working on giant metal trusses and they're expanding and contracting ing to the temperature at different times a day and you're trying to fit them together in a very precise way it's going to be tricky the burj al-arab was constructed using a steel exoskeleton an external frame the six steel trusses that support the building's weight are up to 85 meters long that's longer than a jumbo jet in the desert heat the lengths of steel could expand by five centimeters which was critical during construction when everything had to come together exactly these two steel triangles will represent the huge steel trusses on the burge and they really are huge 80 meters long but the principles will be the same even at this scale so they've been machined very accurately so they'll be fixed together using these fixings that goes in there that mounts in the hole and one here so that's my steel structure firmly fixed together fine but it hasn't yet had to cope with the problems of desert heat and the problems of heat expansion associated with it could be waiting a while here for some desert heat but that's okay we can bring our own gas axe please thank you well he's firing that up i'm going to remove one of these fixings because i want to see the effect of that thermal expansion right well that was i think we can agree a hot day but if i try and put my original fixing back in line it up remember this machine so the hole should align oh surprise surprise they don't there's absolutely no way is that going to go through there because the metals expanded the holes ended up in the wrong place when the top metal bar undergoes thermal expansion it becomes longer but the bottom one stays the same this means that the holes in each no longer align if this were 80 times bigger imagine the effect it would have then but what can you do about it the steel trusses are going to grow and shrink depending upon the time of day and the temperature that will happen it could be disastrous you could end up with a crooked tower the engineers found an ingenious solution thanks to the cam of an engine cams are used of course in car engines you've probably heard of a cam shaft well here is one this is the top of the engine this assembly here is to operate the valves which would be in the cylinder bores below they have to open and close very quickly to let fuel and air in and exhaust gases out that's where the cams come in so i'm going to be the engine turning here and as i rotate the camshaft you can see the cams move eccentrically these lobes where they bulge and stick out push down on this assembly here open the valve and then shut it's a clever principle and one that's been used for a long long time the off-center bulge of a cam allows it to open and close engine valves on each rotation of the camshaft [Music] the builders of the burj al-arab borrowed from that idea to overcome the problems caused by extreme desert heat this fixing it's called an eccentric fixing that's been designed using well the same sort of principle this is like a cam inside this hole here and that gives us the flexibility we need to cope with this heat expansion so let's put it in line it up roughly in the big hole there and if i drop that in we can maneuver it around and there it is that lines up perfectly that's the connection between the engines cam and our fixings for building in the desert the eccentric fixing allows the top hole to be moved so that no matter how much the steel expands it can still be aligned to the bottom hole [Music] engineers at the hotel taking their inspiration from engine cams designed bespoke movable fixings that allow them to the massive trusses accurately despite the thermal expansion [Music] once installed everything was welded firmly in place now the building expands and contracts as a whole keeping it in shape and when the skeleton was complete it could be covered or closed literally having the tallest atrium in the world caused a huge headache for the engineers make the wall solid and you have an enormous dark cave make one wall out of glass and you create an enormous oven the solution lay in making the world's largest cloth wall but they didn't use any old cloth they used glass fiber so whilst the entire wall allows light through making the atrium feel bright and airy it blocks the harshest of the rays and stops them from roasting the guests with heat and blinding them with glare modern glass fibers are strong light and transparent the wall is made by spinning thin filaments of glass into fibers and weaving them into a cloth the cloth allows a small percentage of the sun's energy through enough to illuminate the room but not overheated so it really is that beautiful sail that means guests and visitors walk into the atrium and find refuge from the heat and glare of the desert outside it's an oasis in the baking heat of the desert one of the ultimate luxuries must be a cool air-conditioned room even when temperatures approach 50 celsius outside the interior of the burj al-arab maintains a balmy 23 degrees but keeping it this way isn't as simple as you might think creating and maintaining an oasis in the desert presented the engineers with a series of challenges right from the very beginning the real problem is managing the big difference between temperatures inside and outside the hotel on a hot day the difference between the two can be 20 degrees celsius [Music] temperature differences create pressure differences in nature big pressure differences create violent winds even hurricanes pressure differences affect all skyscrapers they're especially bad in a structure the size of the burj al-arab in the desert it could literally stop people getting in and out of the building back on home soil professor of building engineering physics doug king explains why combining air conditioning a tall building and a scorching desert can stack up big trouble so these big temperature differences although they make life nicer inside the building they can bring big problems absolutely we're going to demonstrate that with this model which is a scale model of the atrium at the birch i did wonder it's not as big no unfortunately we couldn't get one that big in here so we've had to scale things down a bit we've got a light bulb at the bottom which is representing the heat gains from people and from the sun shining in through the windows onto the floor and we've got about a kilogram of dry ice on a tray at the top which is representing the cooling effect of the air conditioning system and the problem is all to do with air flow an air pellet will show how the air circulates heat from people and the sun through the windows on the ground floor cause the air to rise the air conditioning cools it down making it more dense and the air falls we've got upflow on the one side and we've got downflow on the other side leaving you with a tall column of cold heavy air surrounded by the hot desert which doesn't sound like a problem i still don't see why the big problem if the building stays closed it's not a problem the problem happens when we've got this big stack of cold air inside we've got warm air outside and it's all being held back by the front door so why don't you open the door and see what happens right there's door down here at the door that's the one okay so i'll open the door yes what's happening now see how quickly it's clearing down you've got this big column of cold air inside which is much heavier than the air outside and it's all being forced out through that little opening so that's on this scale you can see it's rushing out that's not just tumbling out because i've opened the door that's being pushed out that's right this pressure see how quickly all of that air inside the model has fallen down and pushed the air out through the door so if that's how it works on this scale how big a problem does it represent for something the size of bergeron well for something as big as that atrium 180 meters high that's an enormous stack of cold air very very dense at the bottom opening that door against that pressure is going to be trying to lift a sack of potatoes to be more precise the vast atrium at the burj al-arab combined with the heat of the desert outside could create the equivalent of 21 bags of sugar pressing against the door so 21 kilo weight suspended from a pulley this thing is about as tough as it would be to open the door and the purge and the wrap i mean it's not impossible but it is a bit of a workout i don't think you want to work out every time you open the door especially if you've saved up the book of suite with the largest atrium in the world this problem is especially acute for the bergen around the unwanted stack effect was first noticed with the rise of the skyscraper workers in new york and chicago complained not only of drafts but that they couldn't even open the doors of their buildings because of pressure differences inside and outside one solution to the problem is to equalize the pressure inside the building with the pressure outside the building but that would mean you need to equalize the temperature in here with the temperature out there in the desert you wouldn't be able to heat or cool the building and i think having the temperature in here hover around the 40 degree mark does rather spoil the whole idea of an oasis in the desert the hotel might lose a star or two for that what you need is a means of getting between two areas of different pressure outside on the street and inside the hotel without allowing the pressures to equalize there was a different solution and it came from something inspired by a 19th century french coal mine in 1839 french mining engineer jacques trijet overcame the problem of moving between two areas of different pressure in waterlogged coal mines he created the world's first airlock this is how trees system worked this is my waterlogged ground well it's a glass but you know what i mean here's my mine shaft if i just sink a mine shaft into waterlogged ground like this well it's just full of water at the bottom nobody can work down there the answer to that daily simple seal it at the top that stops the air getting out which means the water can't get in that's all well and good until you need to open the top to let your workers go down the mine then it flows with water again the answer to that one establish your dry mine shaft fit an airlock at the top let your workers in then once they're safely in seal it behind them everything stays dry everybody's happy what they needed at the berger was some sort of airlock so they could separate the pressure inside the hotel from the pressure outside sounds complicated like something of a space station but in fact i've just been through it it's a revolving door revolving doors are designed in such a way that there's never a direct opening to the street the inside is sealed from the outside even when the door is spinning first used in rector's restaurant in times square in new york in 1899 its tagline was always open always closed because the door keeps a seal even when you go through it this makes the sort of airlock that's needed to stop the big outrush of air that would happen because of the stack effect now everyone who can afford it can come and go in comfort but comfort can bring its own difficulties it's probably not surprising that pretty much every electronic gizmo conceivable has been incorporated into these rooms all operated by remote control at the touch of a button televisions drop down out of the ceiling or pop up out of pieces of furniture you can change the temperature open and close the doors change the mood adjust the lighting dim it make it romantic let's leave it bright so whilst all of this is great for the guests it can be a bit of a headache for an electrical engineer luxury calls for a lot of energy just the lights in one suite can draw more power than all the appliances in a british home burn in a whole day and making the mood romantic could have shocking consequences so to dim the lights simply press a button really not complicated we're all familiar with dimmers but simply pressing that button could have had a catastrophic effect the origin of the potential problem lies in what happens to an electrical current when you dim the bulb it can heat the wires to abnormal levels and start of fire [Music] to show what can go wrong when you're adjusting the ambience we're going to check into my own replica of a luxury hotel room i've brought electrical expert paul mitchuson along to create a sophisticated lighting system oh yeah home from home no i'm not back in the bergen around this is my replica there's no ensuite yet or jacuzzi or underfloor heating but it's got a bedside table and plastic roses everything the modern luxury bedroom needs including lights yeah they don't really come on and off when you do that that's just paul out there operating them still thank you there it is all working perfectly my shed may not be a fully authentic replica but it has two crucial similarities it has a high voltage power supply for the electrical systems and it has a dimming system [Music] paul in addition to providing adult supervision has set up a high-tech monitoring station complete with a complicated array of gauges and test equipment paul to me as a customer staying in my luxury hotel room i mean the lights are on that's it what actually is going on in there what's happening so at the moment what we're doing is we have a waveform that we can see here on the oscilloscope and this is this is electric current which is powering the lights yeah and at the moment the key thing to note here really is that this is a very smooth waveform so this is what a normal current looks like on an oscilloscope it's regular and safe so smooth waveform there all right but what if i change things a bit this is what i want to change it's that's a luxury bedroom and i think that light it's a bit harsh it's a little bit more cozy yeah um so i'd like to change the light setting i'd like to have instead of three on full i'd like to put six lights on but dim okay so in that case what we could do is we could dim those we could bring up another three it's a much better ambiance in there but just am i right that's the same amount of light we just got six lights on but lower that's correct same amount of power into the lights we can see from the oscilloscope that something has changed drastically so what's different the problem is now is that we're delivering power to the lights in in short bursts so that's how the power's been halved then that's exactly right yes because i i always thought it was like a dimmer was like a tap because if you turn the tap on full and then that's too much you turn it down halfway and half the amount of water comes out and i thought a dimmer was the same you just turn it down half the amount of electricity goes to the light so it's it's more like turning the tap on and then off and then on and then off modern dimmer switches basically shut off the power to the light 120 times a second it has the effect of not letting the light ever achieve full brightness it also has a side effect so it's the same amount of electricity but being switched on and off that's right well why is that different why does upset so the the problem is is that you're only delivering the power for a short period of time and in order to do that you introduce extra heating effects in the wires an electrical current in a wire always creates a certain amount of heat but adding a dimmer switch can add extra heat to the wire sometimes dangerously so the on off action of a dimmer switch creates so-called harmonic distortion a sort of chaotic current in the wires frequencies the system isn't designed to deal with a wire heating up doesn't sound too ominous it might smolder away but in the wrong circumstances that wire can ignite flammable items close to it if for example someone had carelessly left the exposed wire and a waste paper basket full of cotton wool which might happen to be soaked in nail varnish remover it could happen [Music] with six lights on dim let's see what does happen yeah my that took less than 20 seconds to catch you really wouldn't want that in a top-class hotel the shed's on fire you've ruined my hotel quite badly yeah that is i've seen your point that it's a potential problem obviously this is a very exaggerating scenario electricians don't generally run exposed wires through flammable bins of copper water but if it is a serious threat how come dimmers are so common why isn't there a fire every time someone wants to change the ambiance that could ruin the mood it's because of electrical defenses that include part of a camera's flash [Music] yeah that's i do see your point yeah yeah it's not great does it know my hotel's ruined so clearly that needs to be avoided and it is because they have dimmers and that doesn't happen so what's the solution so the solution is is the capacitor that's in the camera flash so we're all familiar with uh regular camera early camera flashes used explosive powder to create the bright lights but carrying that around was not for the faint-hearted they needed a safe portable alternative and the solution came in the form of an electrical component known as a capacitor in cameras the capacitor stores up energy and releases it all at once setting off the flash but in buildings combined with inductors they act like filters removing the chaotic currents that can cause fires this is a regular relatively large capacitor so this is the thing that allows you to take energy more slowly and release it back to the to the light but all that does is it accumulates this energy and then it releases it as a controllable rate and stops that happening burning your shed down i wish i'd known that 10 minutes ago i'd still have a shed the virgil arabs capacitors are buried deep in the building with the inductors they are the unsung electrical heroes that protect the hotel from itself and its pampered guests i guess it is a relief to know that when i dim the lights i'm not going to set fire to the burj al-arab i imagine the bill would be quite big if i did i'd never get that through an expenses [Music] the designers of this amazing building didn't limit the spectacle just to the structure it is after all a hotel and the guests will spend most of their time inside looking around not outside looking in when it comes to earning its keep this building is all about symbolizing luxury and opulence so what could be the best possible luxury here in a hotel perched in a scorching desert of sand and sea yep fountains think about it a fountain in the desert is the ultimate in opulence and not just any old fountains a series of digitally controlled million pound masterpieces and whilst fountains are pretty and all that it takes some surprising engineering to create the flare you need to be seen to do something extravagant and opulent with the water and the water features here are an engineering feat in their own right mesmerized sometimes the water doesn't even look like water that's because it's not behaving like water normal water that is normal water can't move like this does to allow it to play these tricks you need to eliminate turbulence it has to achieve an almost unreal glassy smoothness something called laminar flow [Music] here comes if you need it a quick reminder of how water behaves in a flow normally there it goes now that's well it's just a mess that's because of turbulence there's lots of eddies and flows and swirls in there which is fine for use here on the farm but if you want to make those beautiful polished glass-like tubes in the phantoms at the burjela wrap you need to smooth that flow out you need to make it lamina and to do that the engineers turn to a type of hose used to help put out fires in skyscrapers the 1930s buildings grew taller firefighters needed to stream water higher to quench towering infernos a helpful hydraulic engineer realized that turbulence reduced the range of fire hoses because the water flow broke up in air his invention to smooth out the flow in fire hoses to make it more laminar was the key to the burj al-arab's glassy fountains right quick quiet minute before we do the next bit and we are going to be finding out about this laminar flow business which as far as i can understand is all about doing well what seems impossible here's an example my coffee don't worry they'll get a coffee too once they've earned it if i stir in milk there we go stir it all in there you go it's all mixed up thoroughly wouldn't it be kind of cool if we could unstir it and then be sort of left with a blob of milk and black coffee so maybe if i stir the other way and obviously you can't that would be turning back time we haven't yet conquered time travel and you can't unstir coffee unless you can make water behave in a fully laminar way amazingly however you can unstir some liquids professor tom mullen from manchester university an expert in fluid dynamics shows me how so tom with this device i'm not are we about to spin a salad or do some painting and what's this got to do with laminar flow whatever that is and trying to unstir my coffee that's your mission to explain all of that oh well what you have to do is put these colored dye yeah into the fluid and then we'll stir it around and see what happens all right the liquid inside is thick viscous sugar syrup yeah but further along here this direction right and the colored blobs are the same stuff with food dye added okay that's fine so three blobs good not much flowing lamina or otherwise going on right now we have to create the flow and so to create the flow what we're going to do is turn that handle say five times in that direction right so that's that's fine it's quite thick stuff this isn't one it's very sticky through two keep going three four five okay i've done that no it looks like we've created a ripeness it's a mess yes it's all gone what do we need to do or what you'd like to do is go backwards the same number of times i'm literally i feel like somebody might be having a laugh at my expense one [Music] two [Music] three slow down a bit just keep going slowly a bit slow it down slow it down slow it down and there you have look at that your three bob's back again i literally unstirred it that's a great party trick [Applause] thick viscous liquids like sugar syrup are very smooth it's easy to make them move in a laminar way they don't behave turbulently like water so you can unstir them and make the blobs reappear if water behave like that you could unstir your coffee to make water flow in a laminar fashion you need to remove the turbulence with a laminar flow nozzle well the good news immediately is now correct me if i'm wrong this would appear to be laminar flowing water this is laminar flow that's coming out of this nozzle here whereas this is turbulent flow the reason you can tell immediately is turbulent is because you can see it it scatters the light and in this case it's nice and glassy smooth and it's laminar okay so quite a simple difference really neat tiding elegant scruffy and a mess but to achieve this it needs this device here that looks like something out of a 60s sci-fi movie what is it you have turbulent flow coming in and then what happens is the flow goes through these gauzes through these straws and so on and so the turbulence decays as it comes through here and you end up with laminar flow coming out of the nozzle the gauze and straws effectively smooth the water removing the bubbles and swirls that cause turbulence non-turbulent water can flow quicker and more smoothly so to solve the problem then the fast moving laminar flow in water for the bergen arabs fountains what you need is a device like this to calm the water down yes and smoothly flowing water also helped firefighters in the 30s american engineer horace barker had a brainwave he realized that removing turbulence made the water travel further his new firehose design had metal feathers inside that aligned the water as it left reducing this turbulence barker's flow strainer extended the range of fire hoses the smooth water flow traveled further so firefighters could tackle blazes on the higher floors of skyscrapers more easily laminar flow nozzles go one step further than barker's device removing all turbulence and smoothing the water to a glassy finish the fountains at the burj al-arab incorporate 66 laminar flow nozzles pretty sure theirs aren't made from drinking straws though either way they allow for breathtaking [Music] you displays the crucial thing about the burj al-arab is that it's all about the bloom it's engineering to impress not just to survive all these engineering achievements have made the burj al-arab a spectacular feature on dubai's skyline the burj al-arab instantly joined the world's list of iconic landmarks becoming the face of dubai synonymous with its reinvention as a luxury playground behind the glitz the glamour and the spectacular show there is some amazing and solid engineering and none of it would have been possible without a game of jacks an engine cap the pages of a phone book [Music] a revolution in fire hose design and a camera flash you ruined my hotel man [Music] you