Ubear was a volunteer at Mounds State Park. One day when she was in the Naturalist's office working, a frantic man came in to report that there was a broken water pipe at the northernmost shelter near the campground. Steve T. the naturalist on duty, calmly explained that this was not a broken pipe, but rather a natural occurance called an artesian well.
Well, Mounds State Park has an artesian well. During the time that Mounds was an amusement park the artesian well was an attraction near the boat launch where there was a man-made dam.
But what exactly is an artesian well? In order to explain what an artesian well is, we first have to describe what causes this phenomenon. In layman’s terms, an artesian well occurs when water is trapped between a rock and a hard place,
LITERALLY.
Imagine a rock sandwich. There are two hard layers with a layer of water in between. The top layer, or the pervious strata (limestone or sandstone or other permeable material) has tiny holes in it that allow water to trickle down-cleaning it at the same time as the water passes through. Then there is the water layer followed by the hard layer, or the impervious strata (bedrock, clay, or other non-permeable substances). Now imagine that the sandwich edges are folded up. This causes a depression in the middle of the “sandwich” that sometimes has a hole in it causing the water to ooze out under pressure. The rate of flow is dependent upon the amount of pressure placed on the water by the outer level of water. Try this with a sandwich and see what happens. I’ve included a simple illustration so you can see how artesian wells are formed. illustration thanks to Wikipedia>
Since the rate of the flow of water is determined by the amount of pressure on the water due to the difference of the height of the sides of the "sandwich" wall as opposed to the height of the ground at the well you will need to do three things for me.
1. Measure the altitude difference in the surrounding area and the altitude at the well.
2. Measure the rate of flow of the water coming from the well.
3. Tell me the gallons of water per foot of altitude that flows from the well. (this part is very tricky).
In order to derive the measurement for number 3 follow the steps below:
A. Measure the altitude at the BASE of the well.
B.Walk out 100 feet in any direction measure the altitude.
C. Walk out 100 ft in the opposite direction and measure the altitude there.
D. Take the two altitude measurements and add them together then divide by 2.
E. Subtract the altitude you got from the base of the well from the average you just got from step D. I told you this was tricky!
****Now Put your gallon jug under the artesian well spout. Count how long it takes to fill the gallon jug. For instance, if it takes 10 seconds to fill the jug it flows at 6 gallons per minute. (60 seconds divided by 10 =6 so you have 6 gallons per minute). You can always hold up however many gallon jugs it takes to last a minute, but this is easier.
F. Next take the difference in altitude you got earlier and divide that number by the gallons per minute you just got and this gives you the gallons per minute/ per foot number to email to ME!
See how easy that was ????