The self-filling siphon, and why can't it be done?

[Nabo00o]

I just hope that if any of you have tried to build this and didn't get it to work, please post your results here!
It is better to know it now than later if this concept cannot work, also it might help to show if some ways of building it works better than others. I will post my findings both good and bad as soon as I find the time and parts necessary make it.

Nab

[utilitarian]

I just hope that if any of you have tried to build this and didn't get it to work, please post your results here!
It is better to know it now than later if this concept cannot work, also it might help to show if some ways of building it works better than others. I will post my findings both good and bad as soon as I find the time and parts necessary make it.

Nab

The reason it does not work and cannot work is that water pressure is not related to how much water is in the funnel, but rather only on how much water is directly over the opening.  It is called the hydrostatic paradox.

The following explains it pretty well:

http://scubageek.com/articles/wwwparad.html

[Nabo00o]

I know that utilitarian, hydrostatics is weird  (but it must be like that). But what I showed in the sketches was not like in the example you showed. The biggest point with this experiment on siphons is that the weight of water on the drain side doesn't rest on anything, so that there is nothing to hold back the weight of water and thus removes this from the normal hydrostatic scenario. Maybe you don't agree with this but that water has real weight, and the only thing holding it back is the counterweight on the suction side of the siphon.
This is the theory I am using.
Naboo

[broli]

utilitarian, this isn't very related to hydrostatics. It's all about hydrodynamics. The big question here is would more volume at a slower rate cause the same suction for the same volume at the same rate. We know that siphons work regardless of flow rate difference between inlet and outlet. So why would multiple heads not work?

Nabo00o, you have to start building one of those setups. I might try this out as well seeing how simple it is.

[Alien509]

This design will work but what you would accomplish is increasing the flow rate of the water. If you were moving the water a negative distance then you would accomplish something useful, without the negative distance it will do nothing useful because gravity will have no potential to work.