How high (no, not an oriental joke!) can you lift water?

[charles]

but isn't that what editors are for?

I'm reading a novel, by an American, which is set in London. It's full of howlers.

[SteveW]

I'm currently reading a book where a character uses an LCD torch!

SteveW

[The Natural Philosopher]

They burn well enough.

Hell there are whole films based on technical impossibilities. China Syndrome etc .

[Nightjar]

I've never really understood what editors do.

American authors writing error filled books about Britain seems to be a genre in its own right. OTOH, I have no idea how a Donna Leon novel would read to a Venetian, although the fact that the author has requested that they are not translated into Italian may be a clue.

Colin Bignell

[Harry Bloomfield]

Tim Streater brought next idea :

Thanks for the explanation, I was not aware of any of that.

[Tim Streater]

Lots of fog, is there, and people in top hats?

[Tim Streater]

But that was pure anti-nuke propaganda. TMI happened while I was in California, and I had great difficulty explaining to local dimwits that a molten reactor core, even if it melted through the containment, would proceed no further (or not very far at any rate).

[The Natural Philosopher]

*shrug* of course it was. Just like the 'inconvenient truth' was pure 'spend more money on my green companies' propaganda.

EVERYTHING is propaganda these days. Money controls the flow of bullshit through commercial media. Even if its not commercial you agitate and lobby to get your man at the top and he staffs it with people who can be relied upon to be 'on message'. Money sets the political agenda, sets the academic agenda....buys the politicians, the journalists, the academics.

And in the limit when things fall apart, buys the guns and the army to keep you quiet. Permanently if necessary.

[Tony Bryer]

Quite extraordinarily the record for concrete pumping is through a vertical height of 715 m (2,346 ft)

[Steve Firth]

No, physics remains as it was in the 1950s.

I take it that you are aware of the depth that oil reserves are below the surface of the earth? The deepest so far has been around 35,000ft (10,000 metres). The average well depth in the US is 5,000 ft.

Oil is pumped up from these depths using what appear to be surface mounted pumps. These are the "nodding donkeys" seen in oil fields around the world. The appearance is an illusion the pump is actually at the bottom of the well.

Would you need intermediate storage tanks every 30 feet or so and a > series of pumps?

No, your father was right you cannot suck water higher up a column than approximately 30ft. Mercury can't be sucked up a column higher than approximately 30 inches. For suction pumps the practical limit is much lower. But these are not the only pumps in the world and pushing liquid up a column can be done to impressive heights.

I suspect either the author was an idiot or the description of the pump was not understood.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Dead common around here ; look up 'foot valves' and 'well pump'.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Maybe not; but if it's a crucial plot device I expect them to at least get something as simple and basic as pumping head right. FFS, it's only primary school physics.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Underclasses touching their forelocks (or cloth caps) and saying "Gorblimey Guvnor". Ah, the sweet song of the ricket-ridden grimy urchins playing football in the streets with the leftover opium pipes from Mr Woo's China House.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

That's a macabre prospect.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Did you really expect that someone who is a novelist would actually have even got that far?

Neville Shute maybe, Isaac Asimov...

E.g. I challenge you to find ANYTHING remotely relating to mathematics or economics anywhere in any book by Jane Austen!

IIRC people just 'have money' which women spend or men gamble and drink away. The only possible exception is Mansfield Park where the master of the house has to bugger off to let the plot develop or to attend to business matters in the West Indies. Or one other novel where an impoverished minor member of the gentry arrives back years later having killed enough Frenchman and captured enough ships to finally be an acceptable marriage prospect.

Nearly all novelists are concerned solely with Yuman Interest

Trade is unmentionable. And as for engineering. Yuk! We don't want to get our literary hands dirty with THAT.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah, the days when you could strike a grimly curmudgeon with your silver tipped cane and the police would arrest him for being in your way.

[Tim Streater]

True but these were just plot devices. And don't forget that in P&P, Mrs Bennett is continually having the vapours at the prospect of losing the house when Mr B pegs it. Her one ambition is that her girls marry well.

A good novelist (ISTM) writes about what they know about and tries to avoid everything else.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Cos she cant envisage any other future. Actually in one of the novels there is a Mrs Smith IIRC that works as a seamstress..

that is of course true.

[Nightjar]

I don't think the pump was particularly important to the plot. It was only peripheral to the need to get the fuel to the surface. IIRC it had been in storage for half a century, so I also wondered what sort of condition it would be in after all that time. I don't think anyone should read Jack Reacher novels if they are too worried about whether the technology works.

What I found rather more disappointing, in another book, was the writer of an historical novel using copper coins in England about three centuries too early. I would expect a writer of historical novels to get historical facts right.

Colin Bignell

[NT]

So far they've got it to the moon. The pump was a bit pricey though

NT