The old ones are the best

I took a trip out to the Falkirk Wheel yesterday - it's only half an hour from my home in Edinburgh, but like most people I tend to do the tourist bit much more when I'm on holiday, rather than visit the fantastic stuff here on my doorstep.

But yesterday, I thought I'd do something different, for two reasons.

Firstly, because I'm a great believer that to encourage your creativity, you should do something you've never done in your life before, every week.

And secondly, my kids have been on holiday for three weeks now, and I thought they should do something that didn't involve Call of Duty, Facebook, or the Disney Channel.

Anyway, it's a fantastic sight, and a fantastic piece of engineering. A boat lift that rotates through 360 degrees (the first and only one in the world), it bridges the chasm between the Forth and Clyde Canal (at sea level) and the Union Canal (35m, or 115 feet, above it).

No locks, no dragging the barges up the hill - just sail the barge in, and the thing turns like a wheel, raising one boat while lowering another. It's also quite, quite beautiful.

You can watch it here: Falkirk Wheel (and ignore the daft eejit who comments "It's fraud! It takes nearly five minutes").

Anyway, what's that got to do with "The old ones are the best"?

Well, think about it. One of these barges must weigh several tons. Or tonnes, if you prefer. And then they fill them with people.

So what happens when there's a barge on only one of the Wheel's 'arms'? Doesn't the weight imbalance cause a problem - if not a disaster?

The solution to this 21st century problem was over 2300 years old: The Archimedes Principle.

The volume of water displaced by the barge is equal to the volume of the barge itself, so by applying the principle, and making sure the weights are equal, it doesn't matter if the space is filled with water, or filled with barge and people.

I wish I'd been in the room when that happened. "So, any ideas on how we might solve this?".

"Hang on, what about that guy that went for a bath and then ran down the street naked, shouting "Eureka"? Wasn't that a similar problem?"

I love it - getting an idea not from what's going on around you, but from another time, another environment, or another culture.

Try it - it might just work.