EVERYTHING
WORTH
KNOWING
64 DISCOVERMAGAZINE.COM
WE LIVE IN A CIVILIZATION POWERED BY STEAM. Most of us don’t
notice its role in keeping the lights on, but steam power is practi-
cally ubiquitous. No matter what fuel a power plant uses — coal,
natural gas, oil, uranium — it serves a single purpose: boil water to
make high-pressure steam that spins turbine blades, which generate
electricity. Even the most advanced power plant ever conceived — a
massive experimental nuclear fusion project now under construction
in France — is essentially just an exceedingly complex boiler.
Nowhere else is our modern dependence on (and possible uses
of ) the hot stuff better exemplified than New York, a city literally
built on steam.
Hot stuff coming through!
BY TIM FOLGER
Steam Power
Steam heats the reflecting
pools of the 9/11 memorial.