DESI DISCOVERY QUIZ 13

Click on the answer ONLY after  you have tried out / attempted answering the question .

India & Indians are hot – literarily & figuratively.

On one side, their hotness was accented by the varied type & style  of fabrics that they manage to create. The way the Kalamkari fabrics were dyed & painted using natural ingredients like jaggery, wax, indigo & vegetable dye, palm leaf pens etc is amazing. Today the textile units spend a whopping sum to treat the hazardous effluents.

On the other side the hot climes brought out amazing engineering  in natural cooled buildings to keep the womenfolk cool. Those were the days when everything was truly natural to the core & engineered in line with nature’s principles. Today, it is where the world is trying to go to. 

When you walk through in Udaipur fort, you can see a primitive steam driven fan – which is a form of active cooling.

.In today’s post we look at the passive cooling mechanisams that were used a good 500 to 700 years ago at 2 buildings. We have covered the places where they belong to, in earlier posts which focused on a different aspect. Today, it is dusting out HMT ( Heat & Mass Transfer) notes on these places

The first building, in Karnataka simply allows water to flow through designed conduits in the walls to keep the place cool for the queen & her consorts. It belongs to vijayanagara empire no further clue is required to identify the place. The question is to identify the building,

The second building, in somewhat west –central India, is what I consider a bible for all engineers in water & heat management. While GKC & RKW marveled on engineering, this place unbeatably marveled in application of engineering concepts. Work-sorry, the joy -of some unidentified genius. It cannot be a result of work.

 It uses a series of water tanks on both sides of a central building & tunnels through it to create a natural cooling effect apart from reservoiring rain water for use throughout the year.  To add more spice, there was a system to naturally heat the water & transport it to for winter & cooking needs. It also had a hot water pool that relied only on natural heating The building looks like a floating ship & Shahrukh danced here once for  one of the many movies made here. Identify the building

Art & engineering went hand in  hand then. After them, the only other thing to have both in place was the original iphone – when every jaw dropped, eyeballs popped out.