Where does water come from?

This lesson asks you to identify sources of water in natural and built environments. The museum links ways people in the past brought water to where it was needed: a public fountain, a tunnel and a well machine. Your class will name the natural sources, such as lakes and rivers, and look at the water around your own school. ¹

Trace the water you use at school or at home back to where it starts. Say which part of the way is natural and which part people built.

Look for wells, pipes, tunnels, tanks or machines. For each one, say what source of water it reaches.

A qanat is a gently sloping tunnel that brings water out by gravity, with vertical shafts for working, access and maintenance ². Abu Bakr al-Karaji describes levels and surveying procedures in a manual that follows water from the search for it to maintenance and handover ³. A later copy shows a level: a rectangular frame, two raised sight fittings, a triangle and a string ending in a weight ⁴.

A qanat slopes gently down so that water comes out by gravity. What would happen to the water if the tunnel climbed uphill instead, and why?

• The sabil: the public water fountain, cared for in its siting and building and kept working by many endowments.
• Al-Karaji's levelling and tunnel-alignment methods: how a route for water is chosen and checked.
• The animal-powered scoop water-lifter: a machine for raising water from a well or pool with a scoop.

Read the cards on the sabil, al-Karaji's levelling and tunnel-alignment methods and the animal-powered scoop water-lifter. Make a chart with two columns, natural sources and built ways of reaching them, and place what you find in each.