Would 2 mason jars with water and 2 siphons continue forever *pic included

[Gibsons]

One professor I had put one of the bobbing birds on the desk and asked how it worked and if it might be used to generate electricity if large enough on a test. Seriously, only questions for a PhD candidate class.

iirc, it can work right generate electricity right? You just need some sort of temp/heat difference, to evaporate and then condense the liquid?

 

[ultimatebob]

No, but two magnets can make a wheel spin forever.

edit: it's not that we should discourage curiosity...but when a simple, obvious source like Wikipedia can answer these kinds of questions...well, maybe check it before you ask the questions out loud...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon

So, if I stick a generator onto that spinning wheel, I get 'free' energy, right?

Why hasn't someone scaled this up to the point where it could power a house? Come on... There has to be some redneck out there with a giant magnet powered generator in his barn powering a trailer home

 

[ultimatebob]

"frictionless" does not exist, so in reality it couldn't work

When did ideas have to work to be patentable in this country?

 

[Fritzo]

No, but a cup of tea can supply the Brownian Motion required to power an improbability drive.

 

[vshah]

Too late! I already have the patent for "All systems consisting of one or more containers filled or not filled with fluid which moves the fluid from one container to the other or does not move the fluid from one container to the other for the purposes of creating limitless energy or any other purpose or no purpose at all."

I'm off to sue everyone in the world now.

so I can't pee without paying you a licensing fee?

 

[silverpig]

"frictionless" does not exist, so in reality it couldn't work

Well, he may actually be able to do it with liquid helium. That stuff is crazy.

 

[JTsyo]

What is you put it on a "reverse sea-saw"? That way the container with less water will be lower. Of course the system would probably just balance out instead of oscillating.

"reverse sea-saw" being some kind of pulley system that pulls the lighter of the two sides of a sea-saw down.

 

[bonkers325]

Yes, but only if the water was at the same level, the siphons both were at the same height, the entire system was frictionless, it was in a vacuum, and it was all at absolute zero.

Erm...

water works best at absolute zero

 

[JimmiG]

No, the sun would eventually explode.