Surprising places
The snow blower
A centrifugal pump for snow: auger in, impeller out, flung many metres through a chute.
- Throw distance
- up to about 12–15 m
- Stages
- auger + impeller (two-stage machines)
- Impeller
- a few flat, radial paddles
- Why radial
- simple, strong, doesn’t clog
Numbers are rounded, typical values — real machines vary.
Two stages
In a two-stage snow blower, a slow auger at the front chews into the snow and feeds it to the centre of a fast impeller at the back.
The impeller’s paddles fling the snow outward into a housing that guides it up and out of a chute — exactly like water leaving a pump through its .
Loading animation…
Why flat paddles?
Snow and ice would jam narrow curved channels. So the impeller uses a few straight, radial paddles: strong, simple and hard to clog, like the of sewage pumps.
Physics you already know
Snow leaves the paddle tips along the at about the — the same fling as the salad spinner from Module 1.