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frosty77777772015-01-01 21:59:30
Physics
frosty7777777, 2015-01-01 21:59:30

And yet, what is the answer to Richard Feyman's problem?

In his book “Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman”, the famous physicist Richard Feynman gives the following problem:
There is an S-shaped lawn sprinkler - an S-shaped pipe on an axis; water squirts at right angles to the axis and causes the pipe to rotate in a certain direction. Everyone knows where it turns - the tube runs away from the outgoing water. The question is as follows: let you have a lake or a swimming pool, that is, a large supply of water. You place the sprinkler entirely under the water and start sucking up the water instead of spraying it out. In which direction will the tube turn?
He goes on to present two solutions that lead to conflicting results:
I will give you an argument that makes you think so, and another argument that makes you think the opposite. Good? One consideration is that when you suck in water, it sort of gets drawn into the nozzle. Therefore, the tube is fed forward, towards the incoming water. But someone else comes along and says, “Suppose we hold the device at rest and ask how much torque is required for this. We all know that when water flows out, the tube has to be held on the outside of the S-curve due to the centrifugal force of the water flowing along the contour. Well, if the water goes along the same curve in the opposite direction, the centrifugal force remains the same and is directed towards the outer part of the curve. Therefore, both cases are the same, and the sprinkler will turn in the same direction, regardless of whether
Can you find all the errors in this reasoning and say for sure which way the hell this tube will rotate? :)

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3 answer(s)
A
Alexander Ankudinov, 2015-01-02
@Ankudinov_Alex

The tube will not rotate

S
Singularity, 2015-01-02
@Singularity

The tube will not move at all.

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frosty7777777, 2015-01-04
@frosty7777777

This video demonstrates the answer to the question: youtu.be/xQrkiH0U1Yg?t=1m17s

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