Thursday, July 30, 2015
Aqueducts
Today we went and saw the aqueducts, which were Rome's ancient ways of getting water into the city. Most of it was underground, but we saw the parts of two different aqueducts that ran above ground. The partial ruins of the two we saw were actually 4 of the 11 aqueducts that ran to the city. After the initial construction the Romans built on top of the existing aqueducts to save cost. They most used lead pipes, and coined the term plumbing hence the symbol for lead on the periodic table is pb. They didn't get lead poisoning though because the natural sediments in the water built a protective coating not allowing lead to get in the water. The oldest one dating I think back to 300bc still had water being piped to it which we and some other people and their dogs enjoyed the ice cold liquid flowing out of it.
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I feel that the Romans did get some sort of lead poisoning at first before the sediment built up its own protective layer to prevent the lead from getting into the water
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how the Romans were able to move the waste water away from their cities. It seems like a simple accomplishment, but is really quite an essential asset for a civilization in order to keep general public health.
ReplyDeleteI was impressed by how two aqueduct lines could run atop of each other to maximize the amount of water being brought into the city. I also didn't realize they coined the term plumbing
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