Archimedes — the great Greek mathematician, engineer, and inventor — lived during the 3rd century. Very few people understood his writings at the time, and it was only during the Middle Ages when his important work began to be understood. Lucky for us, philosophers like Leo the Geometer studied and preserved Archimedes’ texts in the 10th century.

One of Archimedes’ inventions that farmers used for irrigating crops was the hand-operated water pump, otherwise known as Archimedes’ screw. In the Middle Ages, if you wanted to move water from a lower spot to a higher one without electricity, how would you do it? With Archmides’ screw pump, you can make water “fall” uphill.

• 2 L plastic bottle

• Transparent plastic tubing, inside diameter 7 mm; 90 cm long (available at most pharmacies)

• Masking tape

• 2 bowls

• Block

• Water

• Food coloring

1. Twist the tubing around the bottle to make a spiral and fix it in place with the tape.

2. Add a few drops of food coloring to one bowl and fill it with water. This is to make the water easier to see.

3. Hold the bottle by its mouth and place the bottom in the bowl so that the tubing is immersed in the water. This bowl is your source of water. Place the second bowl on top of blocks until it is just under the upper end of the tubing. This second bowl collects water as your reservoir.

4. Twist the bottle with your hand in the direction of the spiral. The bottle should be at a slight angle to allow the tube to scoop in water. You may need to wait a bit to allow air bubbles to escape from the tubing. Keep twisting the bottle in the same direction. How many twists does it take to make water move into the reservoir?

The tubing forms a spiral along the bottle so it looks like a screw — it’s a circular inclined plane. That’s why you angle the bottle, to create the inclined plane, otherwise known as a ramp. A ramp allows you to lift a load using less force. Of course, the higher you need to lift a load, the longer the inclined plane needs to be.

In the pump, water flows down the ramp and stops at the bottom of each turn. Each twist of the bottle turns the screw and moves the water along the ramp. You can change how high or how much water you can move. Do this by changing the tightness of the spiral’s turns, the length of the screw, or the size of the tubing.

This old invention is still used. Oil moves along pipelines along a screw pump, and so does wastewater in sewage treatment plants. And for fun, the Shipwreck Rapids ride at Sea World in California uses an Archimedes’ screw to lift water to the top of the ride.