DIY ‘Shaduf’

This activity is taken from “Let’s Go Live with Maddie & Greg”, a live family science show on YouTube!

View the full episode this activity is taken from on YouTube

“We love this activity because it reminds us that great engineering was happening long before modern machines and technology!”

Materials you could use

2 x sticks of the same length - ideally 'Y' shaped

1 x crossbar stick

1 x longer stick – used as the arm of the shaduf

Rocks

Sand tray

String

Glue

Blu tac

Characters (optional!)

Plastic pot – the ‘water bucket’

Method

This activity is all about creating your very own water transportation system that is the same as the Ancient Egyptians would have used!

1. Take your 2 Y-shaped sticks and stick them to the bottom of the sand tray so they are standing upright – make sure they are the same distance apart as the length of your crossbar stick! Now, fill the sand tray up to help your sticks stay in place. Place your crossbar stick inside the top of the Y-sticks, securing it in place using some glue. To help further strengthen your structure, you could tie some string so that the crossbar is fully attached to the Y shape sticks.

2. Using some string, fix the centre of your shaduf arm to the centre of the crossbar stick. Tie the string in a way that still lets you tilt and swing the arm on the crossbar. (Tie it loosely at first as you may need to adjust the position later.)

3. Take your plastic pot and pierce 3 equally distanced holes near the top. Now measure 3 equal lengths of string and tie one through each of the holes in your plastic pot. Each piece needs to be approximately double the height of the ‘Y' shape sticks you have acquired! Draw the strings together and tie them around one end of the ‘arm’ of the shaduf. You should have about half of the length of strings on dangling loose, these will act as a handle later. Finally, tie a rock to the other end of the arm. This will act as the counterweight for when the plastic pot is filled with water. This part may take some tinkering, you may have to try a few different rocks and play with the position of your shaduf arm on the crossbar. You will know when it's right when you notice how the weight of the rock helps you effortlessly lift the water bucket up in the air. The two will feel 'balanced'.

4. Position your shaduf on the edge of a table so that when you pull the loose strings downwards the bucket lowers off the table edge, this represents the bucket being lowered into a river or stream! In this lowered position, fill the bucket with some water. Watch and notice how the weight of the rock helps you lift the bucket easily up in the air and swing it from left to right with the handle strings!

Other Ideas
You may wish to add more rocks around the feet of the ‘Y’ shape sticks – this will help to secure them in place even more but will also add to the visual effect of the shaduf! You might also like to add some toy characters that can act as the Ancient Egyptians!

The most important crop that the Ancient Egyptians grew was grain. They used it to make bread, and they also used it to brew beer! The Ancient Egyptians drank way more beer than they did water, because the water would be direct from the river Nile which would not have been good for you. They even paid some of the people who had been building the pyramids using beer!

During the drier seasons, when water levels were low, the Ancient Egyptians still needed to store some water to look after their crops. ‘Ancient irrigation’ was created to help the farmers – they built mud brick reservoirs which were man-made lakes where they could keep some of the flood water in land, and they would then build canals where they would get the water from the reservoirs and the river Nile as close to the crops as possible.

The shaduf was used to get water out of the canal. Someone would pull the rope down so that the bucket went down into the canal and fill it with water. The rock acted as a counterweight so that they could now move the filled water bucket around, filling up their own vessels to then potentially be carried by an animal. They may also have just swung it round and poured it directly into the field!

Our favourite fact

The Shaduf was invented in ancient times, but its design is so effective that it’s still used in India, Egypt, and some other countries to irrigate land today!