Oh! Golly it’s Friday. I was totally immersed in research. Well, so here are my studies for the day.

First, continuing my thoughts on meteorites, I discovered that there is a quarry in Sweden where meteorites, that fell hundreds of millions of years ago are preserved in the limestone. We aren’t talking big stuff, but the little bits that would fall off as the meteorite breaks up very close to the earth’s surface. The article begins with a discussion of really huge meteorites hitting in another location in Sweden, but it goes on to discuss meteorites from Kinnekulle, which is a limestone quarry. The dates are a bit odd for the discovery in Kinnekulle (1940 or 2015?) and I have to check up on them. Briefly, certain rocks were always rejected when cut, because they had blemishes that destroyed their looks. Oh! Those turned out to be bits of meteorite that fell in the sediment, and were preserved. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150911095337.htm)

Next up and total change of topic, in Iowa the law is pretty clear; any waterway that is navigable by a boat, capable of holding one person, is up for wading in, by the public. The limit on this, if you can call it a limit, is that the water must be navigable for six months of the year, but, the six months limit only has to be one out of every ten years. Clearly, you can wander almost anywhere that water flows. I don’t think you can wander onto private land from any direction, but you can definitely wander anywhere the water flows, if you once get to the water. A river or creek that crosses any kind of public road is fair game even if you don’t have a boat. Here’s a discussion of the subject near Des Moines which is more or less in the middle of the state. (https://www.polkcountyiowa.gov/conservation/things-to-do/creek-walking/)

This struck me as a bit odd. Nevertheless, some attorney general wrote a long opinion that I read, evidently in answer to a question from a politician. He is quite clear that although the original wording of the relevant Iowa statute discussed boats, the current interpretations say that, since you can’t use a boat without wading, you must be able to wade even without a boat. (https://skunkriverpaddlers.org/files/attorneygeneralopinion.htm) You can fish as well. For my purposes, some of my villains get onto my farm by using the creek that runs along the eastern edge. This shows that they are going to have a defense against simple trespassing. 

I also researched what kind of crop could be growing in the field south of the farm in early May in Iowa. I didn’t want it to be an empty field, waiting to be planted, because the aesthetics of that did not interest me. Hybrid winter rye suits me perfectly. It would be several feet high and not quite finished filling out the tips of the grain stalks. All the stories about it, mostly from seed sellers, comment on the fact that this rye is not very susceptible to ergot. Ergot is a fungus that will cause hallucinations and death when eaten. I didn’t really look into why people don’t see it before they mill the rye. Anyway, ergot is not an issue in my story. I just wanted a nice looking field.

Finally, when I was playing with my grandchildren, we were using a toy water pump and some other objects. The six-year old was investigating the forces that will hold two wet toy cups together and trying to figure out if he could invent a pump based on this difficulty. It eventually occurred to me that I did not understand how pumps work in the first place. All I really knew was that it usually takes a few up and down motions, called priming the pump, to make simple pumps work.

I went online to see what I could find on the subject of Do-It-Yourself toy pumps. Even though I said “toy” a whole set of articles was quite serious about making pumps that were much larger than I was interested in. You could run your water well off some of these. They used a lot of PVC pipe which is definitely one of my go-to materials, but then the designers were suddenly using metal washers and adjusting the size with drills and sanding them down. No. Way too complex. And the PVC pipe was one and a half inches in diameter. That’s … actually … pretty big.

The next bunch of articles were all about using tiny motors. Okay, I’d be interested later. Some of the designs looked sort of doable and cute but still, they weren’t really explaining things in a way that made pumps clear.

A water pump begins with a pipe that reaches from the source of water to the place where you want the water, mostly higher than the source. You could also use a pump to move stuff from one place to another, but lifting is still part of that equation. The pump needs a device that lets water in but prevents it from going back out the same way. It also needs a pathway for the water to exit at its intended location. In fact says the internet, you need a check valve for the first condition. Yes, yes. What IS a check valve?

Okay, imagine a pingpong ball trapped in a tube. The ball can move relatively easily up and down the tube but is too large to get out the bottom where it fits tightly. Somewhere, that’s not the top of the tube, the ball is again constrained, but this time there are holes around it that allow water to rise above the ball when it is floating upward. Now, if you imagine a piston pushing the water down, the water pressure on the ball will shut off the tube. When you draw the piston upward, due to the suction you create, water can run into the tube and get around the ball through the holes above the ball. The last step for a pump is to create an alternate pathway for the water to run out when you are pushing down and expelling it from the tube. ? Or pulling up? I strongly suspect that I’m missing one stage of the process but I’ve worn out my brain for the day and this is as far as I have gotten. It hasn’t actually created a vision in my head that will turn into a pump, but I’m definitely ready to add a lesson for Mr. Six Years Old, just using a clear syringe to show the water rushing in, and then back out the same way.

You might wonder why I didn’t just study the toy pump I have. Well, I did but I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I’m meditating on the repurposing of some old toys for raw materials, now that I’ve achieved more understanding.