🚀 go-pugleaf

"Pentcho Valev" <pvalev@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1191389500.568211.175620@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> On 3 Oct, 01:07, "daestrom" <daestrom@NO_SPAM_HEREtwcny.rr.com> wrote:
>> "Pentcho Valev" <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >http://www.physorg.com/news110191847.html
>> > "When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers
>> > climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the
>> > water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the
>> > human eye to defy gravity."
>>
>> > In a strong electrical field water dipoles are ordered in such a way
>> > that thermal agitation of molecules causes a SPECIFIC PRESSURE inside
>> > the liquid. In certain experiments this specific pressure can lift
>> > water: the energy needed for lifting is in fact heat absorbed from the
>> > surroundings. If lifted water is allowed to leave the field (for
>> > instance, when water has been lifted between the plates of a
>> > capacitor, the specific pressure could push it through a hole in one
>> > of the plates), the liquid will form, ideally, an eternal waterfall
>> > outside the strong field. Perhaps the device cannot be of any
>> > practical use as a heat engine but still it violates the second law of
>> > thermodynamics.
>>
>> Actually, no it doesn't.  Look at how much energy is put into the 
>> electric
>> field to create and maintain it.  Here's a hint, when the water moves, 
>> does
>> it affect the electric field?
>
> You put energy to create the electric field but then, ideally, you do
> not put more energy to maintain it, although water forms an eternal
> waterfall outside the electric field.


Ah.... If only are 'ideals' were reality.

> Consider a charged and then
> disconnected capacitor partially immersed in a water pool, as shown in
> fig. 6-7 on p. 112 in W. Panofsky, M. Phillips, Classical Electricity
> and Magnetism, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1962. Water
> rises between the plates but this does not discharge the capacitor.

Any proof for this article of faith?  The water is drawn in because it is a 
slightly polar molecule in an electric field.  So the molecules will tend to 
orient themselves with the electric field.  That 'discharges' the capacitor 
slightly.  When the water leaves through the hole, the molecules do not 
re-impart this energy back to the capacitor, it instead carries a tiny 
electric field out the hole by virtue of average molecular orientation is a 
certain direction.

So we go from the highly ordered charge of the initially charged capacitor 
to the less ordered configuration of a partially discharged capacitor and 
slightly polar oriented water molecules that are tumbling out the small 
hole.  Sounds to me like entropy is increasing.  No violation of the second 
law here.

> Then, if there is a small hole in one of the plates, the SPECIFIC
> PRESSURE will push water through it so that water will fall outside
> the capacitor. The energy of the capacitor remains unchanged. Water
> was lifted AT THE EXPENSE OF HEAT ABSORBED FROM THE SURROUNDINGS so,
> as it falls, it is this energy that is released - either in the form
> of heat given back to the surroundings or, if there is a suitable
> waterwheel, in the form of work.

daestrom