Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com where smart Happens him Marshall Brain. If you've ever been to Las Vegas, you know that there are fountains everywhere. They all depend on huge pumps driven by electric motors to spray the water. If you've ever been to Rome, you know that there are also many fountains. But some of them have existed for two thousand years, long before there were motors and pumps. So what powered the fountains
of Rome. The simple answer is gravity. Rome received all of its water more than thirty million gallons a day through a system of aqueducts. All water flowed to the city by gravity because it was arriving from surrounding hills. Water could be stored in large cisterns, very similar in concept to today's water towers, except that the water came into the cisterns from the top. Water flowed from the cisterns either through pipes to individual houses or to public
distribution points. Fountains serve both decorative and functional purposes, since people could bring their buckets to the fountain to collect water. The cisterns provided the height needed to generate water pressure for the Fountain's to Spray. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com