Negative Pressures and the First Water Siphon Taller than 10.33 Meters

A siphon is a device that is used to drain a container, with water rising inside a hose in the form of an inverted U and then going down towards a discharge point placed below the initial water level. The siphon is the first of a number of inventions of the ancients documented about 2.000 years ago...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2016-04, Vol.11 (4), p.e0153055-e0153055
Main Authors: Vera, Francisco, Rivera, Rodrigo, Romero-Maltrana, Diego, Villanueva, Jaime
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Barometers
Biology and Life Sciences
Cohesion
Containers
Earth Sciences
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Embolisms
Fluid
Fluids
Inventions
Leaves
Measuring instruments
Methods
Models, Theoretical
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physiology
Pneumatics
Pollutants
Pressure
Surfactants
Technology application
Trees
Vacuum
Water
Water levels
Water transfer
Water wells
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Summary:A siphon is a device that is used to drain a container, with water rising inside a hose in the form of an inverted U and then going down towards a discharge point placed below the initial water level. The siphon is the first of a number of inventions of the ancients documented about 2.000 years ago by Hero of Alexandria in his treatise Pneumatics, and although the explanation given by Hero was essentially correct, there is nowadays a controversy about the underlying mechanism that explains the working of this device. Discussions concerning the physics of a siphon usually refer to concepts like absolute negative pressures, the strength of liquid's cohesion and the possibility of a siphon working in vacuum or in the presence of bubbles. Torricelli understood the working principle of the barometer and the impossibility of pumping water out of wells deeper than 10.33 m. Following Torricelli's ideas it would also not be possible to build a siphon that drives pure water to ascend higher than 10.33 m. In this work, we report the first siphon that drives water (with surfactant) to ascend higher than the Torricellian limit. Motivated by the rising of sap in trees, we built a 15.4 m siphon that shows that absolute negative pressures are not prohibited, that cohesion plays an important role in transmitting forces through a fluid, and that surfactants can help to the transport of water in a metastable regime of negative pressures.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0153055