Having made my way through a lot of glass-related conversation, display, and discussion (and having enjoyed all but a very little), I find myself with a pile of head-scratchers, so being like I am, I've been making a list of them and they add up to my not understanding how people talk about and describe these glass things.
The basics: Purpose is to understand stable, functional definitions and design aspects of percolation, diffusion, circulation and apply them to (improving our (my) understanding of) pipe design, to clarify the ongoing conversation, aid in customer education, and maybe even lead to better pipes?
Reason: even in articles intended to untangle the subject (around the net), 'percolation' and 'diffusion' are used interchangeably and indiscriminately - except when they are completely distinct Confusion is inevitable - especially when "percolation" has a completely different meaning from the way it's used ref: glass pipes.
So: If I felt we were all speaking the same language and meaning the same things by these terms, it would certainly make things easier to understand for me, both in the glass itself, and in navigating the glass-related threads here and elsewhere. This is an attempt to untangle the language as applied to glass water-pipe plumbing; hopefully none of us will have to endure my artwork.... It is also an invitation to comment and participate in this process.
Full-disclosure: I have absolutely no connection to glass art, glass pipes, canna-biz in any fashion; all I stand to gain from this is mental exercise, a better understanding, a stimulating conversation, and maybe even better pipes in the future. Never had anything like this, don't think I've hit anything like this. I've looked all over for answers, so I'm just going to think it through.
-----
As noted, the terms 'percolator/percolation', 'diffuser/diffusion', 'circulator/circulation' and 'recycling/recycler' are used inconsistently user to user, thread to thread, site to site - and maybe by the folks trying to these things @ the LHS, too, if you have one (I don't). Pipe conversations tend to use 'percolation' and 'diffusion' interchangeably as "the source of bubbles", and 'circulation' as kind of everything else (also as a term for a kind of dome).
So I start w/ the dictionary.
percolation
the process of a liquid slowly passing through a filter. It's how coffee is usually made. Percolation comes from the Latin word percolare, which means "to strain through." Percolation happens when liquid is strained through a filter, like when someone makes coffee. (vocabulary.com)
diffusion
the process whereby particles of liquids, gases, or solids intermingle as the result of their spontaneous movement caused by thermal agitation; and in dissolved substances, move from a region of higher to one of lower concentration. (merriam-webster.com)
circulation
movement as of blood through the body;
movement of air, water, etc. through the different parts of something. (merriam-webster.com)
I had no idea before this that percolation and filtration were basically the same, and it seems to be not at all how it's used by The Pipe People. So if we look at "the percolator" as where the vapor enters the water, then the bubbles I suppose 'percolate' UP, and the filtering happens as the vapor rubs against the constantly-changing water interface surrounding each bubble. That filtering is almost certainly of water-soluble combustion by-products ONLY, as the resins being floated by the vapor are water-repellent and will not be taken up. Kind of the reverse of what I think of as percolation: grind the BUBBLES fine, and let the water soak the NON-good stuff out, so the smaller the bubble the less it has to let go of and the faster it will do so, and the longer its' water path, the less chance any unwelcome 'cargo' will remain.
Well, if the size of the bubbles matter, then so does the water volume, and the potential path of the bubbles. Bubbles are great for surface area, but they're great for volume, too, so if you're trying to filter BIG bubbles this way, you need a much longer tube (BONG), OR you need to SPLASH that water around a lot to accomplish the desired washing of the smoke (recyclers? stacked pillar stages? LOTS of bong-types), OR you need to break those big bubbles up into TINY bubbles for max.perc and send them on long trips where they have fewer opportunities to recombine into BIG bubbles again - or KEEP breaking them up into tiny bubbles as they go along.
So far, it looks like percolation happens once vapor meets water; the 'percolator' is more a vapor injector, determining HOW the vapor first contacts the water, which apparently has all kinds of effects on flavor, as does the way the vapor is handled once it's in the water. If the goal of percolation is enhanced by keeping the bubble-size small, then a diffuser would be a thing that spreads the bubbles more evenly/fully/thoroughly through the water and/or directs them around inside the pipe (seems like this could lead to still-more-radial design leaps).
Circulation then seems to be what 'recyclers' are all about, as keeping the water visibly flowing is a major point of these rigs; otherwise, it's driven by temperature variation and the buoyancy of the vapor bubbles...which certainly ought to be enough to keep the water 'fresh'.
Does any of this seem reasonable to the group-mind? Have I understood the topic yet? What am I NOT seeing? What would make MORE sense?
Any who feel qualified to identify the various addressed bits with pix or vid, bring it on, please!
