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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.
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.
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
Except the American version actually flows uphill, and Dyson's version is just an illusion. Thanks for playing, though.
Not only could you used other liquids, pumps generate heat too, and the thing can act as a temperature sensor so it combines three functions in one.
If it gets my chips running faster, simplifies design (lowers costs) and improves reliability (taking out pumps reduces what can go wrong) I'm all for it.
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