Hydraulics 101
the electricity lesson, told in water
▶ Click to start — full screen
A pump, a valve, a narrow pipe and a water wheel, plumbed into one loop. Open the valve and the wheel turns. How fast — and what decides it?
The lab exists to make one idea concrete: a pump does not “make flow”, it holds a pressure difference, and everything in the loop pushes back against it. The flow is what is left after the division. It is Ohm’s law, and a learner who has met it once in copper meets it again in water, where the pushing and the resisting are things you can picture.
What you can try
Each preset is a prepared situation, and the lab says what is worth noticing in it:
- one wheel — one loop: the narrow pipe sets the flow, and the wheel turns on what is left
- two wheels in series — the same water passes both wheels - one flow, the pressure shared
- two wheels in parallel — two branches off one T-piece - one pressure, the flow split, and the pump sags
- metering — a flow meter in line, a pressure gauge across the wheel - the two ways of reading
Running it
Labs run in the Dojo from a Clayground checkout:
cmake -B build && cmake --build build
./build/bin/claydojo --sbx labs/hydraulics-101/Sandbox.qml
Press ? inside any lab for its key map, and T where a guided tour is offered.