I used to teach math, it is kinda a trope for kids to ask: "when am I ever going to use this in real life". Best answer I could truthfully give was "it's not about the techniques themselves but about learning how to think and problem solve" BUT YOU USED LEGIT LIKE 8th or 9th GRADE MATH HERE!!! Maybe I'll hand this over to some teacher friends and they can look at it.

a few things to note: this kind of cooler is highly dependent on the ambient humidity. these work very well in dry climates, but are almost useless in humid environments. so if it just rained, it may work worse

even if it is not the best A/C it is a beautiful indoor fountain

“Not an engineer” but you still did a feasibility study, experimented on the design, did math on your material properties, controlled the conditions in your experiments that you were able to easily handle variation in the outcome. You seem like you’re doing just fine to me.

Whether or not you think of yourself as an engineer, this is engineering. The world needs people who come up with low-tech solutions to the problems of a warming world.

I'm formally an engineer, and you are an engineer. If you can work your way from very limited prior knowledge to a prototype, you've got the core skill of engineering

Suggestion for shrinkage reference: make a slab ruler, with marks matching your actual ruler. So, next time you need precision, you pull out the clay ruler, measure 20 "centimeters" or w/e, and know that fresh, it needs to be 20cm on the real ruler.

Or buy an x% shrinkage ruler, which just work the other way, with extra big "centimeters" that should shrink to the listed length. Very handy

I'm not much of a pottery expert but I have worked in a combination powerplant/chill water plant, and having climbed inside of the cooling towers themselves I can suggest some ways to up your setup more efficient.  Without getting too deep into it you want your falling coolant to have as much surface area as possible, which means breaking up the streams of water into droplets as much as possible.  Instead of the smooth surface use your grooving tool to cover each deflecting plate in channels that start wide at the top and split into thinner ones as they reach the edge, each split about half the diameter of the first one.  Imagine the veins of a leaf but symmetrical.  For this system to work your domes and spacers will have to be very evenly sized and balanced.  I'd suggest using something like a combination square/ruler to get each spacer and each water deflecting dome nice and square where they touch so they'll stand level.  This way it should produce a more even flow of smaller droplets of water which will have overall more surface area.

It's not really possible to compete with a building sized industrial chiller for efficiency but there's nothing to be lost in borrowing where you can.

I just finished watching the 2.0 version only to see this released literally minutes after.

It turned out so pretty😊 this ac series and evan and katelyn's pumpkin preservation series i def always look forward to each year.

When I was little my mom used to take us to her friend's commune where they kept a macrame hanging in the outside corridors and pathways that were all lined with vegetation, which was very important for the experiment to work well.  When they needed air conditioning, they would hose down the macrame and the natural breeze that was always flowing through those corridors provided a natural swamp cooler!  I was so impressed, as a kid, and have never forgotten.  I still plan on doing that when I finally have the home of my dreams.  But I'm going to allow mine to hang in a natural flowing (no standing water at my house😉) stream so they can wick up the water by themselves, since there will be tons of little streams around my house. 😃

even when the fan is not in use the fountain is adorable

Everyone's talking about the beautiful fountain (which is fair), but I'm super impressed with the beautiful tiled desk fan! And if the two together happen to lower the temperature by ~2°F, win-win.

I love how this one looks.
The idea of putting a back on the fan case... this will prohibit the air intake so I would think about this.

I love that this is becoming an annual series! I can't wait for the pottery air conditioner 4.0 net year :P

A key to a swamp cooler's function is that the evaporation of water happens OUTSIDE of the house, because the evaporated water that moves from liquid on a surface, into the air carries the heat away when it undergoes phase transition. Thats why the swamp cooler is installed on the roof or a wall and blows the humid air out.

It is a pretty fountain. Evaporative cooling  works in low humidity environments, and once the humidity rises they become ineffective, even making you feel less comfortable.. the dew point will give you a gauge as to how much cooling evaporative can produce. Great experiment!

Note, that while you may call this a variant of "swamp cooler" you cannot call it AC. Simply put, AC primarily removes humidity from the air, while a "swamp cooler" does the opposite, limiting its ability to cool in an enclosed space. The AC unit both lowers the enclosed space temperature and humidity which is why they are called air "conditioners" and not air coolers. Am I being pedantic? You bet. But seriously, swamp coolers only are effective outdoors.  Water evaporation is great at cooling the surrounding area  (spraying your backyard will work wonders), but if you  increase the humidity of an enclosed space you will make it ultimately feel less comfortable.

That being said, that is a very pretty  piece. I am really loving it.

My toxic trait is seeing this online and thinking I can totally do this 😂

22:14 it's volumetric shrinkage, meaning the bigger or thicker it is, the more it shrinks. Volumetric shrinkage is also the reason you can get divets in straight walls or why a straight plate becomes concave after drying/firing.