'Hey Bill Nye, How About Hydraulic Knees?' #tuesdayswithbill | Big Think

Hi. I'm at Patrick Lee from Deerpath Middle School. I'm in fifth grade. And my question is do you think hydraulics could help people with knee problems when their knee breaks down and it could help it go down much softer?

Patrick, let me start by saying that is a fabulous tie. Way to go, man. It looks good. You know, people are skeptical to pink. I like the pink. I like the purple. I think it's good. Good choice.

That is a great question, could hydraulics help somebody's knees? There's a great word they use in medicine: a prosthetic, meaning an artificial limb. I got to say yes, absolutely. I don't know how familiar you are with hydraulics, but you asked about it. The idea is hydro is a word for water and hydraulics use fluids, which do not compress very much. Water hardly compresses at all; if you squeeze it, hardly anything happens. And the same is true of the oil in the transmission of cars and the oil that's in the pistons, the shock observers of the car.

It's very reasonable that this would work. Because what hydraulics do is so fabulous, is they provide a tremendous amount of force from a small object, a small actuator. And the other thing they really help with is what's called damping, which used to be called dampening. But the faster you move something, the more damping slows it down.

It sounds tricky, but it's not. You've done it. So what happens in a hydraulic actuator? They'll have an opening, which is another, I think it's a Greek word, an orifice. So when you try to squeeze the oil or the water through that opening, it slows it down. And the faster you try to go, the more it slows it down. This has to do with the nature of fluids.

There's a whole study in physics called fluid mechanics, but yes, that is a great idea. You're going to be an inventor, Patrick. Way to go, man!

Let me tell you, I used to work at Boeing on the 747 airplane, which is getting to be an old airplane now, but the president still flies around on a 747. It's a Boeing plane like a 757, 767, 737, 787. Anyway, there's two things I worked on a lot; one of them was a rudder, and that's the thing that steers the plane this way.

That thing is so powerful. There's a pump – there are four pumps by the engines and each pump is unbelievably reliable. They work for years and years because the thing they pump is oil, so they're always getting lubricated. They’re always slippery inside, which keeps things from wearing out.

Anyway, those pumps make 3000, we used to all do it in English units, pounds per square inch. As they say, if you want to move a house, if you want to move the Washington Monument that far in a 20th of a second, a 747 rudder actuator will do it for you. And so that is a great idea, man. You can get so much force in hydraulics and a knee could be the perfect place for it.

Now just notice when you go to do it, you're going to need a place for the actuator to push and you're going to need something to pull with. In my day, I'm sure it still is, this is called a wishbone crank because it's kind of like a wishbone. You're going to need a force, and you're going to need a lever, something that's not quite in the same axis as the force.

You'll figure it out. That is a great idea, Patrick. Be an inventor. Change the world. Nicely done. You know what, Patrick? I bet you have someone in your life who needs an artificial knee. Help him or her out. Way to go...