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Scientists Make Water Run Uphill

Posted by Zonk on Mon May 01, 2006 02:27 AM
from the flee-little-droplets-flee dept.
Science
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."
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  • Scientists also noticed the older water samples flowed uphill, both ways.

    In the snow.

  • So what (Score:5, Funny)

    by kitsunewarlock (971818) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:33AM (#15235417) Journal
    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.

  • For fun and for .. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Neeth (887729) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:33AM (#15235420) Homepage
    1. Flaunting the laws of physics
    2. ???
    3. Profit!

  • Steam, useful for cooling microchips? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2006, @02:35AM (#15235426)
    Too bad only intel CPU's run hot enough for steam cooling to be viable.
  • I wonder if the same principle could be applied to hovercraft.
    • 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.
    • It would work great, you would just need a nuclear reactor or other suitable energy source to heat the surface of the carefully machined track that the hover craft would run on.

      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..

      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rkcallaghan (858110) on Monday May 01 2006, @03:27AM (#15235529)
        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
      • 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.
        Incidentally, this science is months out of date: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn86 1 6.html [newscientisttech.com]
      • 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.

        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

        • 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.

          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 ra

      • What a completely safe assumption.

  • Not flaunting, FLOUTING (Score:3, Informative)

    by mrjeff3000 (776208) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:40AM (#15235442)
    http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/flaunt.html [wsu.edu] ("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.)

  • Maxwell's demon? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Toba82 (871257) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:41AM (#15235445) Homepage
    Has Maxwell's demon been discovered?
    • I don't think so. If I understand the article correctly, the evaporation/steam from the water drops causes the uphill motion. So it is some kind of a steam engine with the drop being the cold reservoir in a setup which can surely be approximated by a carnot-cycle.
      • Ooh! <A random quasi-interesting topic my highschool teacher mentioned offhand, which has nothing to do with the topic at hand>

        Wow, the slash-trolls have come out in force today!

        Perhaps you would have done better to listen to that "quasi-interesting" topic, then apply the knowledge gained to reading the FP link. Because, strangely enough, it has everything to do with the topic at hand. From the linked article:

        the original intention was to devise an arresting demonstration of how random energy c

  • Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LoRdTAW (99712) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:41AM (#15235446)
    Now if they could find a way to do the same with shit.

  • Usefull in computers? (Score:3, Informative)

    by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Monday May 01 2006, @02:44AM (#15235452) Journal
    It works by having the water hovering on steam. As said in the article the same effect you get when you poor some water on a hot plate.

    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.

    • Re:Usefull in computers? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rolfwind (528248) on Monday May 01 2006, @04:08AM (#15235602)
      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.
    • Read TFAP (the fine academic paper) and you will see they already tested it with refrigerants and millimetre-sized drops. The big question is how they would get sufficiently good thermal transfer from the hot surface, given there is a vapour layer involved. Steam developing in your liquid to liquid heat exchanger is bad news (he says having spent the morning fixing a leak in one).

      However, all the liquid cooling kits I have seen for PCs have been so horribly engineered - and use water, which is basically t

      • The big question is how they would get sufficiently good thermal transfer from the hot surface, given there is a vapour layer involved. Steam developing in your liquid to liquid heat exchanger is bad news (he says having spent the morning fixing a leak in one).

        You have perfectly identified the real problem. In addition, you have my condolences on your heat exchanger; however, look on the bright side, it was only a leak. I've heard horror stories about heat exchangers in steam plants melting to slag once t

  • eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2006, @02:49AM (#15235475)
    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 [usf.edu] and Dyson's fantastic real world recreation [tiscali.co.uk] (and there's a good explanation of Dyson did it [bbc.co.uk] at the BBC.
  • When will scientists get around to what's really important? When will they make hot snow fall up?

  • Another way to do it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2006, @03:15AM (#15235514)
    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 [harvard.edu]

  • 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 [f2s.com] Now let's wait for the real life implementation of the ever-rising stairs...

  • I hate this kind of story (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dylanesque (868329) on Monday May 01 2006, @05:20AM (#15235768) Homepage
    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

    • While it's a neat trick, for cooling it would probably be more effective to just gravity feed the coolant and boil it in/on the chip. Of course, we have that now in the form of a heat pipe.

  • FInally! A cure for world hunger! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Provocateur (133110) on Monday May 01 2006, @05:34AM (#15235807) Homepage
    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.
     

  • Links with information... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mike Peel (885855) on Monday May 01 2006, @05:38AM (#15235816) Homepage
    Why doesn't the article link to pages with more information that just a summary?


    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?

  • Against the flow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr_Blank (172031) on Monday May 01 2006, @07:00AM (#15236010) Journal
    "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
  • Maybe next there should be an article about hot air can make balloons lift off the ground and go up instead of down! Or about how magnets can actually make iron particles rise vertically off of a table top! Or about how a drinking straw can make your lemonade elevate from your glass right into your mouth! The laws of physics are shamefully being flouted!!! Gravity has been a hoax all along!!!

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