The government right now is siphoning off huge amounts of job creating capital from the private sector into government coffers to fund an unbalanced budget. The government is a black hole. I therefore vote with the professor and go with gravity.
Thanks, I can sleep now.
Gravity causes liquid in the lower leg to fall, lowering the pressure above it, causing atmospheric pressure to force liquid from the reservoir up into the shorter leg.
The longer leg of liquid causes a continuous “sucking” on the column of liquid above the shorter leg.
So the dictionary has been describing a toilet??
Sure, but what’s the definition of “is”?
FreeRepublic has the correct answer to ANY question.
Who gives a crap and who uses a syphon?
The test: Will a siphon work in a vacuum?
Gravity?
Not sure about that.
If I take hose from one elevation say a pond and run the hose over a higher 8’ fence and then to a lower elevation and begin the siphoning, That is all gravity?
If it were, I could just leave the hose at the lower elevation and it should automatically drain and yet without pressure to encourage flow, there is no siphon.
It might be a combination of atmosphere and gravity but not both.
I thought it was caused by the person sucking on one end.
Archimedes approves. ;)
I hope this physicist is not under the impression that todays kids ever pick up the dictionary.
Ah, you say,the tube must be bent. Fine, run the tube around the earth until the sky end is below the equator.
courtesy of Fractured Flickers, science division.
All pythons can siphon.
Simple: reduce the atmospheric pressure around the shorter leg and see if any flow occurs. No mistake has been found, just someone trying for a “gotcha”. Ho Hum.
The Australian Physics Professor is wrong.
The only reason water flows UP the pipe is because atmospheric pressure PUSHES it up.
If there was no atmospheric pressure, nothing would happen.
Of course, atmospheric pressure is caused by gravity, and gravity is what pulls the water down on the other side.
But if you had a vacuum on both sides, the water would run down both sides of the pipe, because the “suction” created by the water on the longer side of the pipe wouldn’t overcome the “suction” of the vacuum.
And a siphon wouldn’t NEED gravity, although by definition I guess it does; you could siphon with a pump, or any other mechanism that caused a lowered atmospheric pressure.
I guess in the end, you could argue that “siphoning” is the special case of suction where the suction is created by gravity pulling down on the fluid.