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Scientists Make Water Run Uphill
redshadow01 writes to mention a BBC story about scientists flouting the laws of physics for fun, and profit. From the article: "The US scientists did the experiment to demonstrate how the random motion of water molecules in hot steam could be channelled into a directed force. But the team, writing in Physical Review Letters, believes the effect may be useful in driving coolants through overheating computer microchips."
Scientists also noticed the older water samples flowed uphill, both ways.
In the snow.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
So what, they've been doing that at Knott's house of mystery for the past like what, 20 years?
I know how to make water travel uphill:
Step 1: Stand up.
Step 2: Find an incline.
Step 3: Walk up said incline.
Warning: Step 1 and Step 3 should not be performed by anyone who even knows how to properly type in the URL to this website without first consulting a physician. Doing so may cause undesired effects such as loss of breath and/or time spent away from the internet.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
1. Flaunting the laws of physics
2. ???
3. Profit!
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
Too bad only intel CPU's run hot enough for steam cooling to be viable.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/flaunt.html ("To flaunt is to show off: you flaunt your new necklace by wearing it to work. "Flout" has a more negative connotation; it means to treat with contempt some rule or standard. The cliché is "to flout convention." Flaunting may be in bad taste because it's ostentatious, but it is not a violation of standards.") (That is all.)
Has Maxwell's demon been discovered?
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
Now if they could find a way to do the same with shit.
Now you only get steam above 100 degrees celcius. Meaning you chip must be literally cooking before this effect sets in.
A bit too late perhaps?
Well offcourse you could use liqueds with lower boiling temps but then it wouldn't be water flowing up hill anymore now would it.
Nice idea but I think I just use a pump rather then waiting for the cooling to set in only after my cpu is glowing red.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
you engrave every surface that you are going to travel over with .3 mm saw-tooth-shapped groves.
Could be a little difficult on, say, the Atlantic Ocean.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The US scientists did the experiment to demonstrate how the random motion of water molecules in hot steam could be channelled into a directed force
Thats so awesome! Maybe we can use that force push trains or something!
No discussion of water flowing uphill can go without mention of M.C. Escher's Waterfall and Dyson's fantastic real world recreation (and there's a good explanation of Dyson did it at the BBC.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
When will scientists get around to what's really important? When will they make hot snow fall up?
Normality is now: overrated.
Whitesides made water run uphill 14 years ago! He used a different "trick" though: he made a surface that was very hydrophobic on one side, and very hydrophilic on the other. A drop of water feels this gradient and moves towards the hydrophilic side, even if it happens to be uphill. The energy comes from the surface tension of the drop (it relaxes as it moves).
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1992Sci...256.1539C
How about a self recycling dam? After the water creates energy going down you push it back up and do it again. Maybe even you can get some engery from moving it up. This is all assuming that you gain more energy than you're losing with this method.
Look up the Second Law of Thermodynamics and get back to me on that.
Cheers,
~Rebecca
The moment i saw the headline my mind came to Escher, showing us water floating upwards in the painting http://www.petergh.f2s.com/waterfall.jpg Now let's wait for the real life implementation of the ever-rising stairs...
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Except the American version actually flows uphill, and Dyson's version is just an illusion. Thanks for playing, though.
Ahem. Are you seriously suggesting the creation of a perpetual motion machine?? Something that gives out energy? Hehehe. Besides, if you'd RTFA (yes, I know, this is /.) you'd realise the water has to be pretty hot, in order to give the water molecules enough energy to do this.1 6.html
Incidentally, this science is months out of date: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn86
im in ur
Well, that would work. Except that you also need a heating source that will heat the water vapour to above 200C. You could use solar power for that, but if you already have solar power, solar cells would be more efficient. Heck, if you could consistently heat a large area to above 200C with solar power, it would probably be more efficient to make a steam engine.
Another possible heat source could be a volcano, but I think that if you want to extract power from the heat difference of a volcano and it's surroundings, you'd find more efficient ways to do it, than making small droplets of water climb upwards and then fall down through a turbine.
So Escher was ahead of his time?
That was really just an optical trick - the water flowing 'up' the ramp was actually flowing down it, with bubbles underneath the ramp giving the appearance of motion in the other direction.
see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3046791.stm
This is all very nice, but then the scientist go and say this will 'help cool computer chips'. This it will never do, and I >hate itjust below the onset of film boiling (i.e. when this phenomenon does not occur) is well known to represent to the point of optimum heat transfer. Once film boiling comments, the heat transfer coeffiecient for the surface declines drastically (basically because the density of the coolant in contact with the hot surface declines). Although converting liquid to gas uses a large amount of heat for no rise in temperature, unless liquid can be kept in contact with the surface (by getting rid of the gas) then heat transfer declines
Making a droplet walk up hill is a neat trick, but in reality its like firing a water rocket with a payload of water.
I hate this kind of story
Here I was, thinking that scientists have found a way to make rivers bring water to parched land where irrigation could help make the land more productive for starving nations,
and all we have are some serious overclockers.
I'd hate to be at a LAN party with these guys.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Incidentally, this news dates from the end of 2005 - so slashdot is running 4/5 months behind the times.
...I.T. projects I've reviewed as a consultant its scary. The spent huge sums figuring out how to do something which is inherently difficult and provides little real world benefit in anything but the longest possible range projections -- which invariably become useless once that amount of time comes to pass.
Its like building a website out of "Pure J2EE" (whatever the hell that means) -- or building a sand castle one grain of sand at a time. It can be done. That's terrific. But why?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
The headline of this article is a bit misleading. Within the article there is no claim of getting anything for nothing...For example I have a device in my basement that makes water run uphill. I have heard some people call it a sump pump. Using a portion of the waste heat from a CPU to drive its own cooling cycle is appealling...but to not have it start to run until local temperatures are already boiling water seems a bit limited.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
"Humans are 70%+ water. Most people take the path of least resistance. Some rare people use their humanity to go against the flow." -- Benjamin Bias
We've placed your beer on that hill. Better run and get it before someone else does. =)
Yeah, like heating the water, and using it to drive the turbine.
Or around here, pumping the water into the ground, where it is heated, and comes out through the natural geothermal vents, driving a turbine.
I live in Lake County, California, USA, and Calpine (which is rapidly approaching bankruptcy, or just declared it, or something) is selling "The Geysers" to some other company, but lately they've been pumping half-treated sewage into the ground in order to replenish the water that drives the turbines, so they can stay in business...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"