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...

[deft]

Scientists also noticed the older water samples flowed uphill, both ways.

In the snow.

Re:Scientists also noticed the older water...

[moro_666]

Come again when they make beer run up the glass and women run down my pants.

So what

[kitsunewarlock]

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.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:So what

[saltydogdesign]

There's a hill in the Warner Parks in Nashville, TN where you used to be able to park your car, put it in neutral and (so it appeared) you would roll uphill. Unfortunately the road closed years ago. You can reproduce the illusion on a bike, but it's not nearly as impressive.

Re:So what

[rockwood]

There at least 22 other net-documented places that this occurs. Rolling Uphill Illusion [ucr.edu]. The 'local' location to my residence is Gravity Hill, PA [bedfordcounty.net]. These locations are well documented and explained in detail. Furthermore [gravityhill.com] the fifth picture from the top shows where the street has been tagged as well as the starting point.

Re:So what

[saltydogdesign]

Yeah, the location in Nashville is also called Gravity Hill. Very original, yes?

For fun and for ..

[Neeth]

1. Flaunting the laws of physics
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re:For fun and for ..

[CarpetShark]

1. Flaunting the laws of physics
2. ???
3. Profit!

Welcome to the lovely new human endeavour called marketing ;)

Steam, useful for cooling microchips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad only intel CPU's run hot enough for steam cooling to be viable.

Re:Steam, useful for cooling microchips?

[mboverload]

> Too bad only intel CPU's run hot enough for steam cooling to be viable.

That's the stupidist thing I've ever heard.

You take the heatsink off an AMD and you can watch just how hot it'll get.

Re:Steam, useful for cooling microchips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you leave the heatink on an Intel and you still watch how incredibly hot it will get.

Ironically, I first made the steamblock joke about nforce chipsets.

Re:Steam, useful for cooling microchips?

[sethstorm]

It's not as if other chips such as POWER/PowerPC-based ones don't have that problem.

Interesting

[Punboy]

I wonder if the same principle could be applied to hovercraft.

Only if...

[robbak]

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.

2nd law of thermodynamics wins again

[Analogy Man]

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:2nd law of thermodynamics wins again

[orangesquid]

Unless you're using something with a lower boiling point. (perhaps flourinert fc-72, at 56 deg C? http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php ?t=42878 [xtremesystems.org])
And, my laptop CPU can get close to water's boiling point, if the thermometer chip is to be believed.

Re:Interesting

[rkcallaghan]

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

Re:Interesting

[tacocat]

So Escher was ahead of his time?

Re:Interesting

[pmj]

While the second law is certainly a fun law, it is the first law of thermodynamics that invalidates gaining more energy than you lose.

Re:Interesting

[rkcallaghan]

While the second law is certainly a fun law, it is the first law of thermodynamics that invalidates gaining more energy than you lose.

No, it isn't. [nasa.gov]

~Rebecca

Re:Interesting

[pmj]

Okay, it depends on interpretation. From the original parent:

This is all assuming that you gain more energy than you're losing with this method.

I read this as just a violation of conservation of energy, which is strictly first law stuff. You are right if you treat the system different.

Re:Interesting

[isaacklinger]

Actually you could try building that dam in Kansas, where thermodynamics is still just a theory.

Re:Interesting

[rkcallaghan]

Dam != closed system. If one where to use outside energy that wouldn't be captured efficently to create the heat required it might be usable. If one takes the classic "Ants vs. Magnifying Glass" approach to focus solar energy from a broad area into a small area and use it purely as a sorce of heat, perhaps it wouldn't be essential to face the limits of a closed system.

The only reason I would choose solar energy and not say ... magma, is the abundance and the relative inefficency with which it can be empl

Re:Interesting

[It'sYerMam]

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]

Re:Interesting

[joto]

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

Re:Interesting

[drinkypoo]

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

Re:Interesting

[Breakfast Pants]

What a completely safe assumption.

Re:Interesting

[nyno]

What a completely safe assumption.

Please mod up.

Old news

[Soulfarmer]

How come BBC makes this a news this late? I remember seeing stuff about this weeks ago, tho I don't remember where.

Doesn't matter, as the saying goes, no news is good news.. oh wait, I meant, no news is old news rerun.

Re:Old news

[Alicat1194]

New Scientist [newscientisttech.com] reported on this one in January

Not flaunting, FLOUTING

[mrjeff3000]

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.)

Except it really is flaunting.

[artifex2004]

It's conspicuously showing off the ability to exploit physical properties so that they appear to go against the laws, but don't really. I don't think they are showing contempt for the laws, just showing that things aren't as simple as they seem.

Re:Except it really is flaunting.

[NitsujTPU]

That's my interpretation as well. They are showing off the laws of physics. I doubt that they were somehow failing to obey them, beating and humiliating them, then showing the whole world how they "flouted" the laws of physics.

Stupid gravity. Take that!

Re:Except it really is flaunting.

[Bretai]

Then they're flaunting their ability to exploit, not the laws of physics. Nice cover, but they got it wrong. The sentence refers to appearing to break the laws of physics, right? Flouting the law.

Re:Except it really is flaunting.

[stjobe]

Flouting the law.

Good thing Rob Halford [wikipedia.org] didn't think of that as a title [lyricsfreak.com]... :)

Re:Except it really is flaunting.

[wordsofwisedumb]

With a little rubber raft they could be floating. Uphill.

Maxwell's demon?

[Toba82]

Has Maxwell's demon been discovered?

Re:Maxwell's demon?

[sploxx]

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.

Re:Maxwell's demon?

[pla]

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

Re:Maxwell's demon?

[Anti_Climax]

And if you want to see Maxwell's Demon, You can do so here:

http://www.machall.com/index.php?strip_id=346 [machall.com]

Hmmm....

[LoRdTAW]

Now if they could find a way to do the same with shit.

Re:Hmmm....

[Crizp]

The Military has the secret patent for that.

Along with the brown note

[Analogy Man]

Although discredited the military has done some experimentation with the brown note. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Along with the brown note

[drinkypoo]

Discredited by who? The "study" was substantially flawed, as usual for television shows that claim to explain the universe.

Re:Along with the brown note

[drinkypoo]

All I'm saying is that there is no good research debunking the theory. I'm not saying it's true, but I'm saying you can't prove it's not true, without actually doing an experiment that isn't useless.

Re:Hmmm....

[kextyn]

What goes up must come down. And I don't want to be anywhere near it when it does.

This is not flaunting the laws of physics

[Harmonious Botch]

...it is using them in a clever way. Doesn't the writer appreciate that inventing stuff is cool?

Re:This is not flaunting the laws of physics

[Aranth Brainfire]

From Dictionary.com:

Usage Note: Flaunt as a transitive verb means "to exhibit ostentatiously": She flaunted her wealth. To flout is "to show contempt for": She flouted the proprieties. For some time now flaunt has been used in the sense "to show contempt for," even by educated users of English. This usage is still widely seen as erroneous and is best avoided.

Re:This is not flaunting the laws of physics

[Anne Thwacks]

For some time now flaunt has been used in the sense "to show contempt for," even by educated users of English.

I think not: flouting the rules of English can only be considered flaunting ignorance. It is clear proof that the speaker is NOT educated. Those to stupid to know that publicly flaunting their ignorance is not clever are obviously incapable of being educated.

However, even the best of us is capable of typing errors.

Flouting the rules of English

[The Monster]

Those to stupid to know that publicly flaunting their ignorance is not clever are obviously incapable of being educated.

As a fellow Grammar Nazi, I share your pain. That's what makes this so painful. By your own words, I can't educate you, so I'll just have to ask you to re-read this sentence. See if you can spot the obvious error you committed. You use a certain word two times, but the proper usage would have been to use one spelling in one place, and another spelling too.

Watt wood-eyed dew width

Usefull in computers?

[SmallFurryCreature]

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?

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Usefull in computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

how about lowering the atmospheric pressure ?

They used refrigerants.

[Flying pig]

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

MOD PARENT UP

[Zinho]

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

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Shouldn't the SCADA system have shut things down before stuff melted?

Re:SCADA

[Zinho]

Thanks for providing my "something new to learn" for the day; I had to look up SCADA to find out what it was. Full-system monitoring and control; pretty cool idea.

The origin of my horror story is my Thermo prof from the University; his experience goes back far enough that he probably left the industry before SCADA was available (SCADA requires quite a bit of computing power). I'm willing to believe that modern implementations have safeguards against the "melt your exchanger to slag" scenario, in which cas

Re:They used refrigerants.

[jfuredy]

The heat transfer from the "chip" to the water would not be that good, true. But it does take a very large amount of energy to change the phase of water from a liquid to a gas. This energy, by definition, has to come from the chip, therefore producing a cooling effect on the chip. Given one of the previous posts' points about the 100*C boiling point of water, and the need for reduced pressure in the device to make it operate at reasonable temperatures this sounds very much like a modified heat pipe desig

Re:Usefull in computers?

[simrook]

What? ICE9 doesn't exist. That's just the point, it doesn't exist!

At least, so it goes.

(Modding this down would mean -1 Intelligence to you because you don't read books.)

Re:Usefull in computers?

[CAIMLAS]

This technique seems pretty damn pointless to me, as you'll end up having a lot of hot water when it's done cooling, so you'd either need to remove heat from the water actively, or let it cool by adding it to a large resivoir and distributing the heat and increasing surface area. If the latter, then you're better off just using gravity-fed cooling, and allowing the warmer water to return 'upstream' anway... no need to introduce steam.

Re:Usefull in computers?

[merlin_jim]

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.

That nice even 50 degrees you get on top of the chip is very likely exceeding that temperature within the chip when measured on a small enough time and space scale - I think what they're talking about here is creating microscopic channels through the chip - when the temperature gets high enough, the channel vaporizes, and that vapor energy propels the coolant through the channel.

Riven?

[magefile]

So ... now Riven is fair game for LARPers?

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

M. C. Escher & Dyson.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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.

And for my next impression...

[Hobbes897]

When will scientists get around to what's really important? When will they make hot snow fall up?

Re:And for my next impression...

[VinB]

When will they make hot snow fall up?
I'm from the northeast. Please let me know when this happens!

Another way to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

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]

Re:Another way to do it

[zen-theorist]

Whitesides made water run ...

umm, that should be Chaudhary *AND* Whitesides .. from the URL you just posted.

Re:Another way to do it

[MindStalker]

Thats why its pointless, a heat source and a tube will make water flow up as well. Big freaken deal :)

So Escher was right after all

[John_Renne]

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...

Re:So Escher was right after all

[virgil_disgr4ce]

It's an etching ;)

British vacuurm cleaner builder did this already

[Raindeer]

Pah, the British have beaten the Americans by over a year with this trick and not in a small way too. These Americans can only show it in a lab. The Brits have been making water features for in a garden, where water flows uphill. Derek Philips, working for James Dyson (of the vacuum cleaner that never fails to suck), invented this and presumably they have patents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3046791.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:British vacuurm cleaner builder did this alread

[WindBourne]

These principles could be useful for such things as:

• Plant irrigation.
• micro power generators.
• and of course, heat conduction.
• Possibly moving water in space.

So, you may assume that it is money wasted, but then electricity, the lightbulb, automobiles, computers, and even the airplane were all assumed to not work, a waste of money, or something that god would not allow us to do. And yet...

WTF..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

This isn't news.. Last year someone did this at the largest gardening show in the UK. She had the water going uphill to add a major "water feature" to her design. Didn't get much press but unless theBBC just reversed their film it seemed pretty real to me.

Re:WTF..

[Mike Quin]

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 [bbc.co.uk]

I hate this kind of story

[Dylanesque]

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

Re:I hate this kind of story

[sjames]

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!

[Provocateur]

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...

[Mike Peel]

Why doesn't the article link to pages with more information that just a summary?

• The group's website [uoregon.edu], including movies [uoregon.edu]
• The journal article [arxiv.org]

Incidentally, this news dates from the end of 2005 - so slashdot is running 4/5 months behind the times.

Another link

[FastZ]

From a little over a month ago on LiveScience.com about this uphill-flowing water. http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060329_w ater_uphill.html [livescience.com]

You should visit Ireland

[bonglord]

We have a hill here in Ireland (Ballycoogue, Co. Wicklow to be exact) where things roll up not down. I didn't believe it until I saw it.

A bottle of water I poured out on the road very clearly rolled up the hill, a woman with a pram was walking "up" the hill and the pram was rolling without her pushing it.

I shit you not!

Re:You should visit Ireland

[zerosix]

http://www.mcintyre.demon.co.uk/local/electbrae.ht m [demon.co.uk] -- nuff said

Re:You should visit Ireland

[qzulla]

Or The Mystery Spot in the Santa Cruz, CA area. [mysteryspot.com]

qz

Re:You should visit Ireland

[zerosix]

Yeah, too bad there really aren't cool things like this in nature! It all has an explination: http://www.sandlotscience.com/MysterySpots/Mystery _Spots_1.htm [sandlotscience.com]

Umm stream going uphill?

[bxbaser]

Doesnt stream rise anyways.

That sounds like so many...

[CFD339]

...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

[Mr_Blank]

"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

Hah! You can make water run uphill...

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

...but you can't make ME run uphill

Now where my beer?

Re:Hah! You can make water run uphill...

[Jamil Karim]

We've placed your beer on that hill. Better run and get it before someone else does. =)

Re:Hah! You can make water run uphill...

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

You fiend!

All we need now is Devil Fruit...

[dRAEMtYGER]

One step closer to manga/anime being real. If they can have water flow uphill then we can create the entrance to the Grand Line in the manga/anime One Piece! All we need now if for scientists to create "Devil Fruit" that creates supermen when the fruit is consumed and then create the HUGE sea monsters, Sea Kings.

Water

[certel]

Yippy... Now we need some practical applications... Anyone, anyone?

So what?

[Mr.Surly]

Simply get the water moving, aim it at an incline, and it will flow uphill. Sheesh.

Unimpressed

[zerosix]

Now please know that knocking what has been done here. But is it just me or is the title of the article completely wrong? I looked at the video and while the drop is indeed climbing over these "saw" teeth, it isn't going uphill. Now if this was on an incline or really going uphill that would be cool! Of course if anyone has blown on a drip of water on a hard surface, such as a desk, they have essentially created this same affect but obviously without the heat. Watch the video you will see how the drops shap

Why is this interesting?

[belloc]

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!!!

Convection, anyone?

[evilviper]

Fluids flowing uphill due to being heated... Used to cool hot computer chips...

What an amazing breakthrough, and not at all vastly inferior to using natural (passive) convection to do the same much faster, simpler, and better.

Bah!

[qzulla]

M.C. Escher did this years ago. [mcescher.com]

qz

Very Impressive, but...

[Ravendon]

This is very impressive. But, I'm more impressed by the Romans having accomplished this a thousand years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_(Roman) [wikipedia.org]