[Andrew K Fletcher]

How many thousands of times was the salt solution diluted in the Brixham experiment? Yet this caused water to be drawn vertical to over 24 metres in a single open ended tube. More than twice the limit believed to be possible in physics literature.

Of course there is dilution taking place. But so long as the concentration takes place in the downflow and the dilution takes place in the return flow as will be the case with respiration and drinking fluids, we have a mechanism for keeping the circulation going and for altering the pressures inside the vessels.

1 grain of sugar can initiate this flow causing a chain reaction capable of moving a comparitively huge volume of water round a single vertical suspended tube.

[Bored chemist]

What was it diluted with? Was there a bloody great pump working on it? Were the walls of the piping muscle lined? Were a whole bunch of other organs changing both the composition and the temperatur of the liquid? Was the experment widely criticised by independent scientists?

[lyner]

When you turn the C: experiment upside down that’s when the density flow becomes really interesting.

We have been here before and there is not much point bringing in your 'tension' in water idea. The same forces apply whichever way up the tube  may be orientated. That is only 'interesting' in the same way that all hydrostatic effects are interesting. The molecules in any experiment can only behave in the way that they will always behave. They can't 'know' what experiment they're a part of.

The medical aspects of posture are popular with the  of medicine and there are a lot of people who swear by all sorts of odd therapies. The placebo effect is extremely powerful with certain people and at certain times. That doesn't mean that the effect can be explained in 'quasi mechanical' terms. The explanation is much more likely to be in the psychological direction.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

How can a varicose vein go flat by placebo effect? Ever thought of writing a paper about how a psychological direction might improve someone’s varicosed veins while they are asleep? Who knows, your hypothesis might even become a theory and supported by photographic evidence and reports from a lady who happens to be a very good psychologist. Maybe you should put it to her that watching the oedema vanish from her legs and observing the veins shrink before her eyes is psychosomatic?

She is Old Dragon on the forum and would be delighted to engage you as you obviously have some doubts about the credibility of hers and others statements on this forum.

When you turn the C: experiment upside down that’s when the density flow becomes really interesting.

We have been here before and there is not much point bringing in your 'tension' in water idea. The same forces apply whichever way up the tube  may be orientated. That is only 'interesting' in the same way that all hydrostatic effects are interesting. The molecules in any experiment can only behave in the way that they will always behave. They can't 'know' what experiment they're a part of.

The medical aspects of posture are popular with the  of medicine and there are a lot of people who swear by all sorts of odd therapies. The placebo effect is extremely powerful with certain people and at certain times. That doesn't mean that the effect can be explained in 'quasi mechanical' terms. The explanation is much more likely to be in the psychological direction.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/209/13/2515#FIG3

Fig. 3. A diagram of the model of the giraffe cranial circulation used. P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6 were sites of pressure measurement. R1, R2, R3 and R4 were sites where external pressure could be applied using a sphygmomanometer. A submerged pump and/or jugular limb extension tube was used to generate flow through the system. The jugular tube terminated outside the bath to allow for siphon operation, and bath water level was maintained with a valve-controlled constant inflow

Add a pinch of salt and this diagram comes to life without the need of a pump!

[lyner]

Add a pinch of salt and this diagram comes to life without the need of a pump!

But that 'pinch' of salt has to be lifted up (requiring gravitational potential energy - the same amount that your pump would supply) and it would also need significant energy to get it to the site in the first place. It isn't free energy, is it? Of course a column of dense liquid will fall when there is a less dense liquid on the other side of the tube. It would be really surprising if it didn't - and for all the well known reasons.

The varicose vein behaves very much like any soft walled tube partially filled. Hold  up one end and the air pressure will press it inwards and the hydrostatic pressure will make the water fall to the bottom; it will go flat. Isn't that just elementary stuff? We all know that the heart doesn't provide all the pumping action for the circulatory system - Leg muscles plus valves in the veins and also the arteries help in the process. What are you proposing which is significantly different? (Actual figures would help.)

The only aspect of your work which is potentially revolutionary is your apparent experience with very high siphon tubes. You would need to repeat it with scrupulous reliability and verification to get people to listen to you.  Credit to you for producing your movie but it will need more than that to convince the world.

Your 'small scale' version is an entirely different matter; it just verifies what we would all expect. You can't scale an experiment validly if you don't also scale the ambient atmospheric pressure.

[Bored chemist]

Andrew, you clearly don't understand proper experiments.

I don't need to pick an argument with "name ignored by most people", I just need to point out that they are hardly independent.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

That pinch of salt does not need to be lifted. It is a result of evaporation altering the density at an elevated point. This in turn generates the force required to drive fluids to greater heights as shown in the U tube experiment that illustrates different levels and indeed on the video on youtube that shows the actual experiment. The 24 metre experiment and indeed the other experiments were designed to show that circulation takes place

1. Our varicose veins are not partially filled.
2.  we lift the end up as you suggest and the blood does not pool at the bottom as you suggest but either increases or decreases circulation
3. While asleep we are not using the leg muscles so we can rule that out.
4. People who have had veins stripped surgically still observe veins going flat while on IBT so we can rule that out too.
5. The experiment is not a siphon. A siphon does not work at this height. Lowering one vessel will just apply sufficient force to break the bead of water and will not generate a siphon effect. Not surprising really considering the amount of times people have tried to do it for all sorts of reasons. Without the salt in one side you are relying on pressure to move the water and not the flow. Difficult to explain without showing it, so guess we need to do more experiments. I do have more video footage from my experiments on video tape. This will require buying some computer component to transfer the footage to digital.
6. The experiment relies on causing each water molecule to follow the next in a chain reaction generated by the falling salts. Again shown in the simple experiment on Youtube with liquids, salts and sugar dropped in a vase of water. Picture the bead of water as a length of string instead of water for a minute. Clip on a weight at the top of one side and the whole length of string rotates, not because of pressure but because it is string with a weight on one end. The resulting pressures are from the flow, not the flow caused by the pressures.
7. The only aspect of my work is? Again may I refer you to the photographic evidence in the varicose vein study. This study was designed to show the effects of IBT and indeed the pressure changes taking place inside the veins, in a way that ignorance is not an option. IBT has provided some incredible results for people with neurological conditions, yet no matter how incredible, people will find all sorts of excuses for not taking on board the evidence that is put before them. Varicose veins and oedema are simple enough to clearly show the effects of IBT.

You also state that this is common knowledge.  But then have the courtesy to ask what is different, supported by actual figures.

Firstly this is not common knowledge, if it were then every single person with these conditions would be sleeping on an inclined bed.  In fact the common knowledge relates to tilting a bed in the opposite direction so that the legs are higher than the heart. Ask any doctor, surgeon or scientist that has been taught about posture and varicosity, they will tell you the same.

There is a move towards showing how solutes alter the pressures inside vessels at long last. The late Professor Harold T Hammel (Ted) to his friends wrote a paper and indeed forwarded it to me when he learned about my experiments in Brixham.

Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 268: H2133-H2144, 1995;
0363-6135/95 $5.00
AJP - Heart and Circulatory Physiology, Vol 268, Issue 5 2133-H2144, Copyright © 1995 by American Physiological Society
Roles of colloidal molecules in Starling's hypothesis and in returning interstitial fluid to the vasa recta
H. T. Hammel
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Indiana University, Bloomington 47405, USA.
To begin to understand the role of colloidal molecules, a simple question requires an answer: How do the solutes alter water in an aqueous solution? Hulett's answer deserves attention, namely, the water in the solution at temperature and external pressure applied to solution (T,pe1) is altered in the same way that pure water is altered by reducing the pressure applied to it by the osmotic pressure of the water at a free surface of the solution. It is nonsense to relate the lower chemical potential of water in a solution to a lower fugacity or to a lower activity of the water in the solution, since these terms have no physical meaning. It is also incorrect to attribute the lower chemical potential of the water to a lower concentration of water in the solution. Both claims are derived from the teachings of G. N. Lewis and are erroneous. Textbook accounts of the flux of fluid to and from capillaries in the kidney and other tissues are inadequate, if not in error, as they are based on these bogus claims. An understanding of the process by which colloidal proteins in plasma affect the flux of nearly protein-free fluid across the capillary endothelium must start with insights derived from the teachings of G. Hulett and H. Dixon. The main points are 1) colloidal molecules can exert a pressure against a membrane that reflects them and, thereby, displace a distensible membrane; 2) they can alter the internal tension of the fluid through which they diffuse when there is a concentration gradient of the molecules; and 3) only by these means can they influence the flux of plasma fluid across the capillary endothelium. However, the process is complex, since both the hydrostatic pressure and protein concentrations of fluids inside and outside the capillary vary with both position and time as plasma flows through the capillary.
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/13/2/213
Evolving ideas about osmosis and capillary fluid exchange 1
H. T. HAMMEL 2
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Medical Sciences Program, Indiana University School of Medicine, Bloomington, Indiana 47405-4401, USA
ABSTRACT
When a solute is dissolved in water at (T, pel), the temperature and external pressure applied to the solution, the water in the solution is altered as is pure liquid water at (T, pel -  H2Ol). The liquid water and the water in the solution are in equilibrium when  H2Ol is the osmotic pressure of the water in the solution. Every partial molar property of the water in the solution at (T, pel), including its vapor pressure, chemical potential, volume, internal energy, enthalpy and entropy, is identical with the same molar property of pure liquid water at (T, pel -  H2Ol). This elementary fact was deduced by Hulett in 1903 from a thought experiment; he concluded that the internal tension in the force bonding the water is the same in both solution and pure liquid water, in equilibrium, at these differing applied pressures. Hulett's understanding of osmosis and the means by which the water was altered by the solute were neglected and abandoned. Competing ideas included the notions that the solute attracts the water into the solution and that the solute lowers the activity (or concentration) of the water in the solution. These ideas imply that the solute acts on the solvent at the semipermeable membrane separating the solution and water. Hulett's theory of osmosis requires that the solute alter the water at the free surface of the solution where the solute exerts an internal pressure on the boundary of the solution retaining the solute. Fluid exchange across the capillary endothelium is influenced, in part, by colloidal proteins in the plasma. The role of the proteins in capillary fluid exchange must be reinterpreted based on Hulett's view, the only valid view of osmosis.—Hammel, H. T. Evolving ideas about osmosis and capillary fluid exchange.
FROM 1960 UNTIL his death in 1980, Professor Scholander and I began preparation for this lecture honoring August Krogh. Of course, we did not know then the circumstances that would become available. Few persons admired Krogh more than Scholander did. And no one, I believe, admires Pete Scholander more than I do.
During this lecture, I shall attempt to be a teacher and a provocateur. I hope to increase your understanding of osmosis with some old and some new ideas about the osmotic process. I will reexamine Starling's experiment (1) and suggest new mechanisms to account for fluid exchange across the capillary endothelium as blood flows from one end to the other. My suggestions will be incomplete; so I challenge the reader to search for additional mechanisms whereby to account for fluid exchange between a capillary and its surrounding interstitial fluid.  http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/13/2/213

[Andrew K Fletcher]

Bored Chemist:  A name ignored by most people?
Hardly independent? What does this mean exactly? What are you saying about this person?

[RD]

Re: "How does a siphon work ?"

Imagine a bucket on a table containing a long heavy chain, the chain is much longer than the height of the table.
Pulling one end of the chain out of the bucket and allowing it to fall to the floor could set in motion a process which could pull all the chain out of the bucket.

I believe siphoning is like this chain-in-a-bucket analogy.
Tension is possible in liquid, i.e. it can be pulled like a chain (or string), e.g. xylem tubes in trees...

Imagine a narrow tube filled with water and running to the ground from a treetop 360 feet in the air. Water is free to move in the xylem, and the walls of the xylem tube provide no direct support to the water inside. The support comes instead from the water itself. Its internal cohesiveness makes the column of water act like a long suspended string, and the tension on the molecules at any point in the column must support the weight of all the water below them. Expressed as a pressure, or force per unit area, the tension on the water in the xylem is surprisingly high: for every thirty feet of tree height, the tension increases by roughly fifteen pounds per square inch. For a xylem tube 360 feet high, the tension at the top is 180 pounds per square inch.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_/ai_n13606614


I believe it could be possible siphon in a vacuum. It would be necessary to pump some of the liquid initially to start the process,
 (analogous to pulling an end of the chain out of the bucket and allowing it to fall to the floor), but once started the flow would be maintained by gravity, i.e. air is not necessary for a siphon to work.

[lyner]

RD

So are you saying that a liquid is the same as a solid? You imply that water is just like a chain. Inter molecular forces in liquids are  small -  enough to produce surface tension, which is a very small effect. You tow your car with a chain and not a column of water.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?

[lyner]

AKF, your post goes on too long for me to answer all the points but there are some things I need to clear up.
The salt gets up there because energy has been transferred one way or another. It's not magic just heat.

Without muscular activity in the legs, guardsmen faint and airline passengers develop dvt. The veins are distended and go flatter when the legs are elevated. Scout first aid knowledge. The veins are partially full, as I said.
If this tension exists then how can it not show itself everwhere where water is involved?
If you believe anything about the nature of molecules then you have to accept that a molecule can only interact with its close neighbours. You continue to ignore my challenge to tell me how molecules in your model 'know' that they are in your u tube and not in a simple syphon.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

Without muscular activity? A guardsman’s muscles are not relaxed. The pressure on the base of the foot is compromising the circulation. This is why they shift their weight from one foot to another to relieve the pressure and assist the circulation to get past the obstructed vessels.

Airline passengers compromise their circulation by sitting in one position for too long, often falling asleep for hours on end, The dry environment further accelerates evaporation adding to the back pressure as dissolved salts flow down to the restricted vessels. Again pressure on the buttocks compromises circulation, this same pressure is responsible for haemorrhoids developing while sitting on the loo seat for  too long, or as granny used to say “don’t sit on a cold hard surface for too long as it will give you piles.

It does show itself everywhere water is involved. Here is the ultimate demonstration for you:

[RD]

RD
So are you saying that a liquid is the same as a solid? You imply that water is just like a chain. Inter molecular forces in liquids are her small -  enough to produce surface tension, which is a very small effect. You tow your car with a chain and not a column of water.
Do you have evidence to the contrary?

The xylem example above is evidence of the tension water can withstand...
 

tension at the top [of 360 foot tree] is 180 pounds per square inch.

180 psi is quite substantial, not a "very small effect". If you had a tube of water with two freely moving,
 (and snugly fitting) pistons, you could tow your car with it if it had a diameter of about three inches.

 [ Invalid Attachment ]


(the I shapes are the freely moving pistons).

[lyner]

Without muscular activity? A guardsman’s muscles are not relaxed. The pressure on the base of the foot is compromising the circulation. This is why they shift their weight from one foot to another to relieve the pressure and assist the circulation to get past the obstructed vessels.

Airline passengers compromise their circulation by sitting in one position for too long, often falling asleep for hours on end,

So are you agreeing or disagreeing that muscular activity (that means movement) aids circulation?
I'm afraid that you've been wasting my time. You give me a link which is supposed to be demonstrating the existence of tension in water. I patiently looked at it all (btw, it was a Kids programme and not a Scientific Presentation - which is about all you can expect on U tube). Nowhere in the link does 'Dr Bob' mention tension. He merely talks in terms of density and classical hydrostatic pressure effects. You have chosen to quote a phenomenon as proof of a fanciful idea you have. That is no evidence, in any way, that you are correct. It can be explained perfectly on the basis of density changes and a resulting pressure difference.

As for the phisiological bits, if you want me to I could calculate the power available from the pressure difference on different sides of your circulation system. The estimated output power of the heart is a couple of Watts (look it up - there's a lot of stuff about it). I should estimate your 'osmotic' power to be in the region of milliWatts. So the heart dominates - other effects are there and probably measurable but . . . so what (WATT)?
Can you accept arguments based on things like power and energy with actual quantities quoted? Or does it smack too much of 'conventional, chauvinistic' Science?
Again, I ask you to give me some evidence of a properly documented phenomenon in which 'tension' is the only explanation?

[lyner]

tension at the top [of 360 foot tree] is 180 pounds per square inch.

That is not evidence - it is a statement.

If you had a tube of water with two freely moving, (and snugly fitting) pistons,
 you could tow your car with it if it had a diameter of about three inches.

That has been explained in terms of atmospheric pressure by Otto von Guericke years ago. See this link among many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_hemispheres

[Andrew K Fletcher]

A californian redwood?

The cohesion tension theory?

My experiment at 24 metres?

No matter how much evidence is before you you will never accept it!


The following letter came from Professor Hammel:

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF MEDIICINE date September 6/ 1995

Dear Mr Fletcher:

I received the information you sent me regarding your ideas about fluid
transport in trees, in tubing and in the vascular system in humans.

I will study your ideas and comment upon them as soon as possible. A Quick
scan of your Brixham experiment prompts me to ask if you conducted this
experiment with boiled water without any solute added to the tubing on
either side of the central point which you raise 24 meters? I expect that
you could raise the tubing to the same height with or without solute in the
water. In any case , your experiment confirms that clean water (water that
is unbroken water, water that is without a single minute bubble of vapour)
can support tension of several hundreds of atmospheres. The record tension
obtained experimentally is 270 atmospheres. At 10 degrees C. (c.f. Briggs,
L. Limiting negative pressure of water. Journal of Applied Physics 21:
721-722 1950).

I expect even this tension at brake point can be exceeded by careful
cleansing of the water, to remove even the most minute region of gas phase.
When the water is already broken, as occurs when gas is entrapped on
particulate matter in ordinary water, the water will expand around even a
single break when tension (negative Pressure) is applied to the water. When
you boil the water, prior to applying (2.4-1) ATM negative pressure to the
water in the highest point of the tubing, you eliminate some of these breaks
in ordinary water. I expect that dissolving NaCl or other solutes in the
water will have little or no effect on the way you measure the tensile
strength of water.

I am enclosing some reprints that may interest you. Some of these deal with
negative pressures we have measured in tall trees, mangroves and desert
shrubs. Other reprints deal with how solutes alter water in aqueous
solutions and how colloidal solutes (proteins) affect the flux of protein
free fluid between plasma in capillaries and interstitial fluid.

Sincerely H.T. Hammel Ph.D.

[RD]

If you had a tube of water with two freely moving, (and snugly fitting) pistons,
 you could tow your car with it if it had a diameter of about three inches.

That has been explained in terms of atmospheric pressure by Otto von Guericke years ago. See this link among many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_hemispheres

It is intermolecular forces, not atmospheric pressure, which permits water to withstand tension.

If you want an experiment try separating two sheets of wet glass each about a foot square.
The intermolecular forces between the water molecules act like glue holding the two sheets of glass together,
atmospheric pressure is not required: this glass-sheet demonstration would work in a vacuum.

(The Magdeburg hemispheres demonstration would not work in a vacuum).

[lyner]

this glass-sheet demonstration would work in a vacuum.

That, again, is merely a statement. Have you any evidence of this.
You might bear in mind that the  force which has been measured can be explained by atmospheric pressure.
What value do these inter molecular forces have, btw? Can you quote a value from somewhere. You imply that it has been measured. It would have huge implications on things like the boiling point of water, for instance.

[RD]

this glass-sheet demonstration would work in a vacuum.

That, again, is merely a statement. Have you any evidence of this.

The wet glass sheets stick together because of the cohesive (and adhesive) properties of water..

Cohesion (n. lat. cohaerere "stick or stay together") or cohesive attraction or cohesive force is a physical property of a substance, caused by the intermolecular attraction between like-molecules within a body or substance that acts to unite them. Water, for example, is strongly cohesive as each molecule may make four hydrogen bonds to other water molecules in a tetrahedral configuration. This results in a relatively strong Coulomb force between molecules. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohesion_(chemistry)

The water really does act like strong glue. Glue does not require atmospheric pressure to function: glue works in a vacuum.

What value do these inter molecular forces have, btw? Can you quote a value from somewhere. You imply that it has been measured.
 It would have huge implications on things like the boiling point of water, for instance.

The strong intermolecular forces between (polar) water molecules are why water has higher boiling point than similar sized molecules, e.g. water (H₂0) is liquid at room temperature, whereas ammonia (NH₃) and methane (CH₄) are gases at room temperature.
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) boils at 26^oC.