Modern Marvels: How Water Supports Life (S13, E35) | Full Episode | History

nature's precious elixir so powerful it can carve our landscape yet  so nurturing it can spawn life we bottle its   goodness showcase its beauty and seek its  wonders at the far edge of our solar system   now water on modern marbles don't let this deceptively simple  substance fool you beyond water's   common veneer lies tantalizing complexity  beneath the surface lurks a dynamic entity water radiates with the essence of life yet it  often unleashes its savage ability to destroy gushing from great heights it packs  the power to light up our cities   trickling is a single drop it conveys our humanity   water is the very stuff that we are made of  more than 70 percent of your body is water   water is the necessary highway that gets all  the chemistry going that is your metabolism   within earth's six billion people  flows four billion gallons of water   almost as much as pours over  niagara falls in one hour the world surrounding us is no less a wash in  water it blankets 70 of the earth's surface a total of 326 million cubic miles   but of that staggering figure only  two and a half percent is fresh water and most of that amount is locked  away in ice caps and glaciers just one percent remains to sustain us all nature magnifies this sobering reality   distributing our precious supply unevenly both  geographically and over time the result is that   more than a billion people lack access to clean  drinking water without water we're dead it's   a very undervalued commodity and we only know  that its value is there when we don't have it   i think benjamin franklin said we only know  the worth of water when the well is dry where water is plentiful however it's risen  to new heights as a slickly marketed product   media stories of tap water laced  with pollutants and impurities   have convinced millions that the healthier  better tasting choice comes in a bottle 25 of america's brands are purified municipal  water the majority are drawn from natural springs what precisely is a spring camp holly springs in richmond  virginia serving the region since 1923   is an ideal place to clue you in this is the surface expression of camp  holly springs this is very similar to   probably 99 percent of the springs that people  actually see what happens is that precipitation   rainfall is falling to the highlands behind us  it moves through the soil into the underlying   aquifer and becomes groundwater now  two three years later it is discharged   the crucial spot where the water actually  breaks through the surface lies farther uphill sealed in an enclosure called the spring house   the main purpose between the spring  house and containing the spring   is to keep any sort of surface contaminants out  of the the spring the groundwater itself it keeps   surface water out through rain or runoff it keeps  people from being able to introduce contaminants   because really the water never sees the  light of day before it's put into that bottle camp holly's owners don't pump the  water directly from the aquifer   gravity carries the water from the seepage  point through a pipe to a pump house such   a method avoids any possibility of  disturbing the spring's natural flow   the water enters through this pipe and flows  under its own power to our holding tank which   has a capacity of 500 gallons from the holding  tank we pump through a quarter mile pipeline   to our production facility using a seven  and a half horsepower pump when we're not   pumping to the production facility you can see the  overflow pipe and the natural flow of the spring   at this point we have pristine water with  32 parts per million total dissolved solids outside the company's production facility the  spring water collects in a 14 000 gallon tank   from there pumps convey it to the top of a 47-foot  tower to begin a sterilization process using ozone ozone an unstable form of oxygen  is a powerful oxidizing agent   that destroys any microorganism it may contact as the water descends from the  top of the ozone mixing column   we inject a mixture of ozone gas  and water at the base of the column   the ozone being a gas it tries to ascend the  column as the water is descending this creates   a mixture of the two for contact time of over  nine minutes the ozone sterilizes the water from   this point the water enters the production  facility into our filler to fill bottles part of bottled spring water's allure is that  no two springs or the waters drawn from them   are exactly alike a spring with an entirely  different surface expression than camp hollies   lies in picturesque iceland the water in this pristine lake percolates up  from an aquifer reaching depths of a half mile the water begins as rain  in the mountains of iceland which trickles down beneath the  ground into layers of volcanic rock this country iceland is drifting apart   by approximately two and a half centimeter  one inch a year and this gradually breaks   up the lava layers and this makes it  possible for the water to travel through   the lava rock acts as a natural filtration system  for the water before it settles in the aquifer   from there pumps carry it to the  production facility of iceland spring   which bottles more than 2  million gallons every year   that's a modest amount compared to the output  of major industry players like ds waters it operates one of its 28  plants in sacramento california every day trucks complete a two-hour drive to  deliver water pumped from a protected spring   in the sierra nevada mountains the water like  that at camp holly springs and iceland spring   undergoes thorough filtration and disinfection but the plant's most intensive purification   techniques are reserved for the  second type of water processed here sacramento's municipal supply its journey is more rigorous passing first through a phalanx  of sand and charcoal filters the most crucial filter of  all lies further down the line   which uses a process called reverse osmosis a pump  forces the water under high pressure through a   vessel encasing a semi-permeable membrane  the membrane consists of multiple layers   that act as a very fine filter featuring  molecular sized pores the membrane traps   contaminants and debris from the municipal  water supply that are too large to penetrate but the water molecules are small enough to  fit through and flow into the membrane's core the municipal water supply that we have  in this location is 100 parts per million   total dissolved solids and through reverse osmosis  we're able to reduce that to one part per million   the step following reverse osmosis  is to add minerals back in for taste   purified water can have a kind of  a rough taste across your tongue   and when we add minerals back in we ensure that we  have a pleasant tasting product for our customers   the water then undergoes two  final disinfection processes   first it's bathed in ultraviolet light  and then subjected to an ozone treatment finally it's off to the filling station a large part of bottled water's appeal  is the consumers deem it fashionable but eons ago the basic idea sprang  from a matter of sheer necessity   early man realized that water was  something we need but it isn't always   where we need it so they learned quickly to be  able to transport it and putting it into vessels   was the easiest way to bring it to places where  it didn't exist the first things that were used   to bottle water were things like animal bladders  and hollowed out gourds there are many people who   think that ceramic pottery came initially from the  need to store water reliably in arid situations   civilizations including greece and rome  took water management a step further   engineering monumental ways to  transport water from distant rivers   the roman aqueducts delivered millions  of gallons of fresh water daily to the   imperial capital but delivering water was  one thing keeping it clean was another in the 5th century after rome's fall   innovators in venice devised an ingenious way  to filter rain water stored in the city's wells workers placed a perforated cistern in a  conical hole about 10 feet deep they filled   the space surrounding it with fine sand stone  surfaces channeled the rainwater into the sand   where it flowed into the cistern  through the holes near its base   most of the water resided not in the cistern but  in the sand which continuously trapped particle   debris and microorganisms every time you withdrew  water it was effectively filtered through the sand   and that was the epitome of water  treatment technology in western europe   but over the next millennia the  venetian's example failed to catch on and as europe's population exploded the  quality of its water plummeted in growing urban   centers waste and sewage fouled its taste and  poisoned its purity it was very unfashionable   to drink water the only people who would drink  water were people who had absolutely no other   choice what they would do is they drank beer  and they drank what they called small beer   which was beer that had been watered down to  an ethanol concentration of one to two percent   that was sufficient to depress the growth of  fecal bacteria which are dangerous to humans   but at the same time it wouldn't dehydrate you  europeans shunned water for the next 400 years then in the 18th and 19th centuries   the rich rediscovered its healthful benefits  in the pristine springs far from the cities water became not only acceptable but chic  what ultimately happened was that people would   know of a spring and then they want to  continue drinking that spring at home   and that really is how the bottled water business  started european water bottlers prospered the wave eventually hit america in 1855 new york saratoga springs  churned out 50 million bottles city dwellers weary of impure municipal water  plunked down the modern equivalent of more than 30   to purchase a single pint by about 1900  bottled water industry in america was   a big business in 1913 something  happened it changed all of that   in philadelphia engineers who had been tinkering  with this for years finally came up with a method   of adding liquid chlorine to water which would at  least partially disinfect it and essentially make   it entirely safe to drink and so one of the very  large reasons for buying bottled water disappeared   overnight the bottled water industry in america  collapsed and almost disappeared altogether america's bottled brands can  find themselves largely to   office water coolers for the next six decades but in the late 70s slickly marketed brands from  europe revived america's love of the product   opening the floodgates for an  industry now worth 10 billion dollars while many consumers embrace water  as nature's ultimate beverage   it enjoys another identity as  nature's definitive oddball we think of water as an ordinary substance  but it's anything but the surprising truth   is that this abundant compound doesn't  behave the way most substances do   and its chemical and physical oddities are  the key to its role as the matrix of life we think nothing of the fact that  ice floats on the surface of water that happens because water expands when it freezes  increasing its volume by nine percent and becoming   less dense this is just one of water's  properties that sets it apart as an oddball   most substances unlike water are much more dense  in their solid form than in their liquid form   glacial acetic acid is an example of that  here we have a sample of its solid form   and in these beakers we have  a sample of its liquid for   as you can see solid glacial acetic acid  acts very differently than water does yes this is how so-called normal compounds behave   and if water wasn't such a rebel the  consequences would be catastrophic if water behaved like most substances   if frozen water were more dense than liquid  water then every year when a pond froze over   it wouldn't freeze over it would freeze under  and the ice would sink to the bottom of the pond   and then build its way up from the bottom to  the top instead of from the top to the bottom   all the life in that pond would die because it  wouldn't have any liquid water available to it   nothing could survive so the fact that  ice is less dense than liquid water   enables life to carry on even when temperatures  shift and get cold during the winter   what's responsible for water's wackiness at  the molecular level it's electrically lopsided   the h2o molecule looks like mickey  mouse ears with a slightly negative   charge near the oxygen atom and a slightly  positive charge near the hydrogen atoms hardly anything has this great big  negatively charged atom with these two   little tiny positively charged atoms it's what  we call polar it aligns itself in certain ways   when two water molecules are going toward  each other they have to orient themselves   so the positive portion of one water molecule is  pointing toward the negative portion of another   water molecule this attractive force between the  two molecules is what we call the hydrogen bond   and it's the hydrogen bond that gives  water all of its unusual properties the hydrogen bond compels water molecules to grab  onto one another accounting for another of water's   curious attributes steel is more dense than water  so we wouldn't expect anything made of steel   to float we would in fact expect it to sink like  this steel paper clip however if we very carefully   take our paperclip and place it just on the  surface of the water we'll find that it will float   you'll notice the subtle indentations that the  paperclip is making in the surface of the water   this is because water's high surface tension  allows the surface to act as if it were a skin we see water's high surface tension in action  whenever we overfill a glass the molecules   cling so tenaciously to each other that the  water can rise significantly over the brim water surface tension explains  how some insects can walk atop   ponds and lakes it gives raindrops such  a thick skin that they fall like bullets whittling away mountains over geologic time and it enhances water's ability to ascend  through the capillary systems of plants and trees   if water didn't have the fabulous surface tension  property that it has trees would be little stubby   things plants would be shorter the very surface  of the earth would look completely different water's single most significant feature perhaps   is that practically anything except oil dissolves  in it biologists theorize that water's role   as the universal solvent enabled life to  begin in the watery cauldron of our oceans if you think about what is required to get the  complexity necessary to evolve into life you have   to think about how many tries you could have tries  meaning what ways could you combine molecules   or even atoms to make molecules that might yield  more complexity and evolve into life and water is   a perfect solvent for that to happen the water  has its polarity which can align the bits and   different attempts to arrange them in such a way  that they'll chemically react with one another   and you can do it in unlimited number of  tries because it allows things to move around   in all kinds of direction amidst the countless  molecules of water making life itself possible   rome scattered misfits even  more peculiar than the rest one in every 6 600 water molecules has  hydrogen atoms that are heavier than normal   in a normal water molecule the hydrogen  atom's nucleus consists of a single proton   the heavy hydrogen atom called deuterium  also contains a neutron in its nucleus   the result is a compound called  deuterium oxide also known as heavy water heavy water has special properties tailor-made for  nuclear power generation it's enabled engineers   to design reactors that create fission  using natural instead of enriched uranium   which is both difficult and prohibitively  expensive to produce canada's bruce power facility   about 220 miles northwest of toronto extracts  its heavy water from neighboring lake huron two thousand tons of the lake's water yields only  two ounces of deuterium oxide the u.s reactors use   light water but they have to have rich uranium  to cause the fission we've gone the other way the   canadian design is the natural uranium with heavy  water moderator that allows the fission to happen   in the reactor 68 tons of heavy water surround  cylinders containing the natural uranium in fuel water most of the neutrons emitting  from the uranium would be absorbed by the   water molecules but the heavy water repels  nearly all of them making them ricochet between   the water molecules this slows the neutrons  redirects many of them back through the uranium   and enables the chain reaction to be sustained   and this is what releases the heat and causes  the water to heat up which we carry off to the   boilers to make steam which eventually  turns the turbine to make electricity heavy water may be a misfit  plucked from an oddball substance   but without it millions of canadians  would be totally in the dark as it continues to energize a nation water's standard variety endures as the  lifeblood of the world's agriculture welcome to nebraska the heart  of america's bread basket   farmers rely on a bounty of water to feed  their thirsty crops and in turn a hungry world agriculture on this scale demands a larger  more consistently available volume of water   than the unpredictable rains can deliver   so the state's growers sustain their fields  using the time-honored art of irrigation farmers irrigate 50 million acres  of farmland in the united states   swallowing up nearly 40 percent of america's water and in nebraska the principal source of that  water lies trapped beneath the earth's surface a vast subterranean reservoir called the ogallala  aquifer stretches from south dakota to new mexico   over the eons rain water has percolated downward  saturating the spaces between soil and rocks   and penetrating porous  formations of sand silt and clay   like a titanic sponge the aquifer holds  nearly a quadrillion gallons of water   enough to cover the continental  united states to a depth of 16 inches every year farmers pump about  5 trillion gallons from wells   to irrigate what nature by  herself could never sustain these monstrous watering wands on wheels extending  from the wells have become signature features of   the great plains they're aptly called center  pivots as the name would apply a center pivot   it has a fixed point that it rotates around and  from the air it gives you a circular pattern that   people may have seen when they're flying across  the united states or even other parts of the world it goes around typically in a clockwise direction   working just like a watch hand and  going around very slowly and applying   the water evenly over the entire field as  it moves the machine itself is powered by   small electric motors at each drive unit or each  tower they consume less than one horsepower each   a center pivot covering 130 acres typically  takes three days to complete one rotation   it can sprinkle a thousand gallons every minute  enough to fill an olympic sized pool in one hour this model watering a sod farm outside of omaha   epitomizes a crucial element of  every center pivot's engineering keeping the linked spans of its lengthy  pipeline properly aligned as they move   the very last set of wheels which  is at the outer end is the master   as that last set of towers or drive unit moves  ahead it creates an angle difference at a flex   joint above each set of tires in the tower  box are the switches which sense the angle   and as the angle changes a switch is tripped  which will energize this motor and this drive   unit will move forward it will move until it's  back in line again and then it will stop and this   cycle will continue to repeat itself as the center  pivot moves around the field center pivots have   revolutionized productivity by distributing water  more efficiently than any other form of irrigation one of the older methods it's eclipsed called  gravity irrigation conveys water through furrows   dug between rows of crops it's still used on about  60 percent of america's irrigated cropland for   gravity irrigation the first thing we need is a  water source and the water source we're using here   today is out of a local river what we typically  do here is we lower our basket into the river   and once we have that down into the river then  we're ready to start this 45 horsepower diesel   engine that will deliver the water to our gated  pipe at the rate of about 1200 gallon a minute this field is about 1200 feet long or a quarter  of a mile we keep the pipe at the top end of the   field so that we can run water down the slope to  the bottom end to make the gravity system work   the main advantage or reason that we're using  this system here is we have an odd shape field   that's small it's not very conducive to a  center pivot system our disadvantages here   with this system are we're over applying water  to the extent of about twice as much as we need   on the top end of the field to get  water to the bottom end of the field the roots of this simple form of irrigation can be  traced back 6000 mesopotamia in present-day iraq in the millennia that followed farmers  in arid regions around the globe have   used gravity irrigation to power  the progress of their societies by the 19th and early 20th centuries it was  enhancing productivity on america's great plains but many homesteaders remained  at the mercy of the fickle reigns just beneath the settlers feet the vast ocean  of the ogallala beckoned but their only means   of pumping it to the surface were their  underpowered windmills they could tap just   the shallowest groundwater enough only to water  a few trees or fill a bathtub on a saturday night the 1920s witnessed unusually generous rains  but in 1931 the skies abruptly dried up the decade-long dust bowl  epitomized the grim truth   that wherever water vanishes human misery follows winds whip the dry topsoil away and with it the fortunes and dreams of thousands in 1939 the skies finally opened but only  an effective new system of irrigation could   provide farmers the consistent volume  of water they needed so desperately in 1948 a colorado farmer named frank  zyback finally delivered he devised a   primitive prototype of the world's first  center pivot the pipeline was only about   knee-high the towers were made like kind of like  a bridge to support with cables and the wheels   weren't very big and the ground clearance  wasn't much but he knew he had a good idea nebraska's belmont industries which acquired  zyback's manufacturing rights in 1954   cranks out an average of 7  000 center pivots each year belmont and other manufacturers  have produced about 400   000 pivots now delivering life-giving  water to more than a hundred nations they've left their signature  circles from brazil to saudi arabia but in nebraska where pivots  dominate the landscape   like nowhere else some experts have grave concerns the 5 trillion gallons pumped yearly from  the ogallala aquifer far exceed the amount   nature is able to replenish there are a number of  locations in nebraska where the water table itself   has been lowered by 30 or 40 vertical feet and  it is a worry to many people those are the areas   where we've seen a lot more  stringent regulations go into   effect where government doesn't  allow new wells to be constructed opinions vary but some believe that only  a fifth of the ogallala's precious water   may remain by 2020 but as water continues to sustain a thirsty world   it also enjoys a splashier roll  as a flamboyant entertainer our attraction to water isn't based  solely on our instinct for survival   beyond its life-sustaining essence lies  a fluid purity to which we naturally bond fountains have adorned civilization  since the days of antiquity   showcasing water is a unique artistic medium one of the most impressive of all spans eight  acres fronting the bellagio hotel in las vegas the fountains of bellagio  have gained global renown   as a triumph of modern engineering and aesthetics this eye-popping wonder is the handiwork of  water specialists at wet design in southern   california the fun thing about working  with water as a medium is it is the most   common taken for granted element on the  planet and so to coax something new out   of it a different nuance even maybe an  emotion really gets people's attention wet design has been producing custom fountains  and other unique water features since 1983. these colorful fluid arcs are called laminar  streams channeling the water through a special   sharp edged orifice redirects its normally  haphazard flow of molecules into parallel paths   that eliminate all turbulence and water  surface tension helps hold the streams together   and you notice that it creates a rod of  water that almost doesn't look like water   looks like a glass or a plastic rod but  you'll notice that it is actually water we can adjust the flow and bring these streams  together and create what we call laminar sparks   now what we're doing is lighting the water with  a fiber optic illuminator that has color in it   those colors mix because it's a liquid medium they  mix instantaneously so you'll get a color mixture   if you pay attention to the colors that  you're actually using if you had a red   and a blue for instance you would  get a perfect purple there as a mix   water impresses as it shines and sparks  but we seem to love it most when it dances at the bellagio hundreds of jets called shooters   propel plumes of waters skyward  and artful synchronization to music the smallest variety are called nanoshooters and  just to show you how simple in concept this is   this little thing here is a valve it turns on  and off when it gets a small electrical signal   just like a battery signal and it has a little  when it's installed a little tube of compressed   air coming to it and it squirts that air into  this little opening here and that shoots up   and whatever water now you've got to understand  the water level's sitting about right here this   tube is filled with water spurt up it goes  one size up from wet design's nano shooter   is the mini shooter this is a mini shooter  generally the water level sits about right here   and it has an air tank that holds about five  gallons of air and a water vessel that holds   about five gallons of water there's a valve  in between them so when you open the valve it   allows the air to push the water out generally  this thing will shoot up to about 150 feet that pop you here results from a sudden velocity  change as the fast-moving pressurized air exits   just after the slower moving water this is a  supershooter it's about 10 times the volume of a   mini shooter in its water and its pressure  this shoots about 250 feet into the air a different breed of device creates the  bellagio's more delicate water expressions gyrating beneath the water surface  are more than 200 robotic pumps   called oarsmen regardless of size and this is  a model of a very small one all of our oarsmen   underwater robots have multiple axes of movement  this way this way and when you combine those of   course you get an entire hemisphere of motion and  on top of that as you change the water pressure   you get what we call the z movement  up and down the bellagio's oarsmen and   shooters owe their timing and grace  to wet designs computer specialists like choreographers of a broadway musical they  program every move the water makes basically   what i want to show here is that now you have  two chases going from one end of the lake   all the way to the other end and let's  say i don't like that and i want something   more dramatic than that i want the chasers  to begin from either end of the lake   and converge right on the center  i highlight the necessary code and i just basically replace that chase with the  one that i'm interested in so as you can see we're   getting to that part the chase starts from either  end and now converges towards the center and the   it peaks right where the center ring shoots out  and this was done in a matter of like a minute   given the spotlight water  compels us to drink in its beauty 700 million miles from las vegas water is  putting on an even more impressive show   and it may be the smoking gun to life  on the far edge of our solar system in its quest to find life among the stars nasa  has devised a simple strategy follow the water on july 7 2003 it put that maxim to the test   dispatching its probe opportunity  on a seven-month voyage to mars in 2002 nasa's probes had confirmed  the long-held belief that the martian   poles contained a vast quantity of frozen water following its landing opportunity would make   a discovery that would redefine  our knowledge of the red planet its zone of exploration was called  meridiani planum near the martian equator when opportunity opened up the first thing we  saw was outcrop what an outcrop is it's a piece   of rock that's been there for a long period  of time and actually tells a history of the   region we have a microscopic imager on board and  we started noticing a pattern in the materials the size of the ripples and the shapes  of those ripple marks are comparable to   ripples in sandstones on earth that we know  are laid down in rivers or in lakes and so   our initial interpretation was  that there'd been some shallow   sea sloshing the water around maybe three to  six to ten feet deep at its deepest and it   could have been spread over the whole area could  have been the size of oklahoma opportunities find   is the strongest evidence yet that  mars once had a habitable environment and other tantalizing possibilities remain   now that we've seen evidence of at least  past liquid water on the surface of mars   we have to ask ourselves is there any liquid  water now on the surface of mars or just   beneath its surface because if there's liquid  water anywhere just below the surface of mars   there could be microbes in that liquid water or  microbes using nearby liquid water to carry on   a life just the way microbes can live  in rocks and in sediment on the earth in 2006 nasa's cassini spacecraft made  yet another enticing discovery of water sweeping past saturn it detected  a spectacular phenomenon occurring   on one of the ringed planet's 47 moons  enceladus near the moon's southern pole   geysers are spewing enormous vapor  plumes up to 260 miles into space scientists surmise that liquid water boiling  beneath the surface is expanding and forcing its   way to the surface if that geyser were to contain  liquid water it would present a real mystery it's   too cold at enceladus to be liquid so what's  happening inside that little moon to make   liquid be possible mysteries aside  scientists believe that enceladus's   water heat and organic compounds combine to  make it a prime candidate to support life at the edge of the solar system  or the tip of our tongues   water beckons nothing else offers more profound  promise or greater wonders water is the most   important treasure we have on this planet  we are water we need water it is a miracle substance you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 151,301

Rating: 4.8022165 out of 5

Keywords: history, history channel, h2, h2 channel, history channel shows, h2 shows, modern marvels, modern marvels full episodes, modern marvels clips, watch modern marvels, history channel modern marvels, full episodes, season 13, s13, episode 35, e35, Modern Marvels S13 E35, Modern Marvels Season13 Episode35, Modern Marvels Season13, Modern Marvels S13, Ep35, How Water Supports Life, Water Supports Life, history channel full episodes, Supports Life, Full Episode, modern marvels show

Id: jOxOiIpbXdM

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/insertnamehere405]

drinking ice water while watching it.