this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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Illustrations of history
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How does that siphon work? I would think they would need a pump of some kind, even if it's just a bunch of Roman workers/slaves turning an Archimedes Screw, to get the water to go uphill.
Same way a fuel siphon works, as long as the opening is below the inlet, and the rest of the tube is full and sealed, the water will flow.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon
It never would have occurred to me that siphons work that way, too!
By why did they even need one here though?
Because it's simpler to build siphons through large valleys instead of 100 meter high 10 kilometer long aqueducts.
For demonstration purposes only.
Valley was too deep for the aqueduct but they didn’t want to make the drawing taller just for that
Romans were notoriously averse to making drawings taller.
Yeah, but the water pipe goes back up meaning that there is near equal pressure on either side of the U-Siphon, right? Kind of negates the siphon, in a sense?
I'm no fluid dynamics expert. Just a casual Joe.
Its a bad diagram, the other side needs to be lower :/
The "pump" is the higher elevation at the source.
If you’ve ever used a siphon to drain a fish tank, it’s a similar concept. I believe the entrance is a bit higher than the exit, so I guess gravity and water pressure?
It needs to be water pressure because atmospheric pressure can’t lift water more than about 10 metres.