00:00This is a nail. Pick up a hammer, give it a few light taps, and it goes right into the
00:04wood.
00:04Now, make it a hundred times bigger. It becomes a steel pile, tens of meters long and weighing
00:10dozens of tons. How do you drive it into the ground? Make the hammer a hundred times bigger
00:14too? Even a crane probably couldn't swing it. Then you have an idea. Drop a block of iron
00:19weighing dozens of tons from a height. Each strike pushes the pile a little deeper into the ground.
00:24After every strike, how do you lift the block back up? Hoisting it with a crane every time
00:28is far too slow. So, you split the block into two parts, a ram on top and an anvil below,
00:34with a cylinder between them. And you put explosives inside. The explosion launches the ram high into
00:39the air. Gravity then pulls it back down onto the anvil, driving the pile into the ground.
00:44How do you make sure the ram lands back in the right place? You add guide rods that connect
00:48the ram and the anvil, so the ram can only move up and down along them. Loading explosives every
00:53time is too dangerous. One mistake could cause a disaster. Then you think of a car engine,
00:57burning fuel releases energy that pushes the piston up and down again and again. Could fuel
01:02push the ram in the same way? So, you fit a fuel injector to the cylinder, spray in gasoline and
01:07ignite it. The gasoline explodes and pushes the ram up. When the ram falls, it strikes the pile again.
01:13This still needs a separate ignition system every time, which is a hassle. So, you switch from gasoline
01:18to diesel, which ignites more easily on its own. As the ram falls, it compresses the air inside the
01:23cylinder. The more tightly the air is compressed, the hotter it gets. That moment, diesel is injected
01:28and the hot air ignites it instantly. Explosion's enormous pressure drives the ram back up. Once
01:33the exhaust gas escapes, the ram falls again and slams into the pile. Fall, press, inject, ignite, rise.
01:40The cycle repeats. Every impact drives the pile deeper into the ground. Congratulations!
01:45You've just invented the diesel pile hammer.
