The Steam Turbine: The Surprising Relationship of Engineering & Science

Charles Parsons designed a superior steam engine called a turbine, but was ignored until he crashed a celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. His turbine still generates most electricity.

*Other videos in this series*

*Video Summary*

00:00 Titles

00:08 Intro
To understand the relationship between engineering and science, Bill notes he will share in this video the story of how an engineer created a revolutionary engine by taming the extraordinary power of steam.

00:24 Power of Steam
Bill explains that steam can power engines because it expands: one cup of liquid water will expand into 1,600 cups of steam.

00:46 Reciprocating Steam Engines
Bill explains that this dramatic change of volume exerts a force that engineers tapped into in the early eighteenth century to drive reciprocating steam engines. He explains the operation of such an engine, focusing on the piston/cylinder where steam expands and the levers that translate the back and forth motion (reciprocating) of the piston to rotating motion.

2:07 Engine Wastes Steam
Bill notes that while the reciprocating steam engine revolutionized the world, it wasted much of the steam’s energy. Once the steam has expanded to about sixteen times its original volume it lacks the “oomph,” the force, to overcome the friction of the heavy piston within the walls of the cylinder. And friction in the arms that convert reciprocating motion into circular motion chew up some of the steam’s energy.

2:30 Charles Parsons’s Novel Steam Engine
But, in the late nineteenth century a novel steam engine appeared that used the energy from an expansion of an astonishing four hundred and seventy nine times a cup of water’s volume. That novel engine was perfected by Charles Parsons. While a huge leap forward, no one would buy his engine.

2:47 The Turbina & Queen Victoria
In frustration Parsons built a ship called the _Turbinia_ to convince everyone of the superiority of his engine. To attract attention he crashed a naval display honoring Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

3:33 Advantages of Parsons’s Engine
Parsons’s engine eliminated the need for the piston and cylinder and levers of the reciprocating engine.

3:45 Aeolipile
Parsons fused two two ways of using steam to rotate a shaft. The first is the aeolipile, designed by Hero of Alexandria in about 130 BC.

4:47 Branca’s Steam Device
In 1629 an Italian engineer, Giovanni Branca, designed a giant boiler shaped like a human head. From its mouth a jet of expanding steam struck a paddle wheel — much like a water wheel — which turned gearing.

5:45 Parsons’s Turbine
Bill explains how Parsons succeeded by cleverly combining the action of the aeolipile and Branca’s device by placing thirty wheels along a shaft — half rotated with the shaft, half were affixed to the casing.

8:00 Infinite Complexity
This design is simple in concept, but Parsons described the execution as of “almost infinite complexity” because of an astronomical number of dimensions and configurations of wheels and blades and every other design variable in his turbine.

09:19 Why Parsons Succeeded
What separated Parsons from the thousands of inventors before him was, he said, the “data of the physicists.” Parsons drew on the data of a forgotten French scientist, Henri Victor Regnault, who spent nearly thirty years documenting the properties of steam. From the data tabulated by Regnault, Parsons could determine that _in principle_ a functioning turbine _could_ be built.

10:15 Science as Rules of Thumb
For Parsons, scientific knowledge helped rule out what wouldn’t work, narrow the possibilities of what does, and shorten the path to a solution: scientific knowledge was being used as a rule of thumb. Thus the relationship between science and engineering is that science supplies gold-plated rules of thumb.

10:49 Electricity Generation
Although the turbine was a nineteenth century invention, Parsons’s turbine still enables the daily lives of nearly every human on the globe as its descendants generate the world’s electricity.

11:03 Next Video
In the next video Bill explores a single word from this definition of the engineering method: What exactly does an engineer mean by “best.”

11:15 End Credits

[amoose]

What I like about these videos is that they embody the “clear and vivid” form of science communication described by Alan Alda. Few added frills, just let the thing be cool by its own merit and clearly explain the thing you’re passionate about.

[nomad]

These videos should be shown to all students, and the book read by all 1st semester engineering students, I certainly would have known more of what I was getting myself into. I hope you continue this channel after the promotional videos for your book, your work is concise, well researched understandable by laymen and trained alike, a true feat of engineering.

[sagewaterdragon]

Your video about the design of aluminum cans is what inspired in me the love for engineering that eventually turned into a career - thank you! This new series of videos perfectly captures so many ideas that I've never seen described directly, and it's filled with interesting examples. I'm so glad that you're still making these videos.

[integza]

This video is a gift to society! I’m so excited watching this !!!

[StaK_]

Every once in a while, the universe smiles on us and the Engineering Guy delivers a new video. 😊

Well done, we missed you!

[jesusnthedaisychain]

Steam turbines are my bread and butter. The coolest thing is that they are so well-balanced, you can spin a 330, 000# LP rotor by hand, once you put oil to it in the bearing. They're great.

[GraemeSPa]

In 1971 at age 16 I went to Marine Engineer College in South Shields, England to learn how ships worked. We learned about reciprocating engine, took many examples apart (taken from scrapped ships) and learned how to put them back together and set up the slide valves. That was fun - but it was only when we started on turbine theory did a light bulb go on for me. I grasped the impulse-reaction principle straight away and was hooked on turbines. As a senior engineer I worked on VLCC tankers with steam turbine plants and high pressure boilers - they had excellent precision control but were very fuel hungry. At 26, 000 SHP at full speed, I needed to put 240 tonnes of heavy fuel into the boilers every day. Turbines gave way to diesels - no way near as neat or as controllable, but they only burned 90 tonnes of fuel a day for about the same output power - a no brainer if you are paying the costs. I am glad that I had my time standing between the turbines as they spooled up to full sea speed. This was an experience that all engineers should have at least once. Now you only see turbines in nuclear or power plants, the steam turbine has largely vanished from the Marine world. If you ever get the chance to visit Newcastle on Tyne in UK, there is an excellent museum dedicated to Turbinia, the development of reaction turbines and the life and work of one of Britain's greatest engineers - Charlie Parsons.

[hhjones]

I was wondering how Parsons determined how to size the rotors. When you revealed the diligent work of Regnault my jaw dropped! What an amazing resource for an engineer. Thank you for this informative series and book.

[BillDavies-ejye]

4:55: It seems to me that the plastic model turbine is shown back to front. The curved blades should increase in angle as the steam passes through the disc, and so on for the following discs. Think of each blade as an aerofoil. Apart from that, thank you, from one Bill to another, for your video.

[nisbahmumtaz]

I remember when I was a wee lad in middle school when I first saw your video on the genius behind aluminum can designs. Never thought I'd imagine someday I would eventually join the giants, but here I am finally a professional engineer, 3 years in the industry. Some flames just needed a bit of spark. And that middle schooled spark was all thanks to you, engineerguy.

[danscantland]

As someone working on a graduate degree in Thermal Fluid systems, I had never heard of Parsons. Thanks for telling his story

[mikeall]

I have made a post Army career being a steam turbine generator engineer for a large generation company. I travel to many many site to do detailed inspections. I'm constantly blown away by the vast amount of refinement over the past 150 years that got us to the modern rotor design.

The new stuff ia great but my favorite plants are the ones built in the 60s and 70s. They are examples of what slide rule design can do. The mechanical hydraulic controls are far and away my favorite.

[deathwingelitegantz]

Keep them coming Bill, love your work and welcome back.

[doxielain]

The anecdote you closed your book with, you and your father watching the activity of a factory one more time, made me tear up a bit. What a wonderful and bittersweet moment.

[Kombivar]

This series is a true masterpiece, awesome job!

[kylesty]

As someone fascinated by philosophy of science your lucid analysis of the engineering method vs the scientific method was absolutely delightful. Thank you for your work!

[aldenconsolver]

I can make a sound argument that those who most respect scientists are engineers and those who most respect engineers are scientists.

[jimtwisted]

It is too bad not as many people know about parsons as know about the Kardashians.

[joeschmoe]

Bill's channel was the first channel i subscribed too. Youtube gold.

[notenoughmonkeys]

The quality doesn't disappoint. Always enjoy showing how Engineering is often the fusion of existing technologies / ideas as opposed to the creation of the new, where the fusion ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. Glad to have your content back in my feed again!