Water Flows Uphill

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC are reporting James Dyson's new garden feature, a waterfall with water flowing uphill. Apparently, he wanted to recreate an Escher drawing."

It's not a waterfall then, is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a water elevator, or something.

Simple... it's antiwater

[Anonymous Coward]

Antiwater (two part antihydrogen and one part antioxygen) is repelled by the force of gravity.

This is..

[CptChipJew]

really going to screw things up for the salmon.

"Wait, we swim upstr..dow...wtf?"

Poor fish =(

Oops...

[Black_Logic]

"I've had a few architects coming up to me asking me about it. But I'm not telling exactly how I achieve the effect."

Wonder if he knows that the BBC gave away his secret. :)

Although, Maybe the explanation in the article was oversimplified?

And for his next trick...

[AvantLegion]

... a toilet whose water rotates clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere!

(don't bother replying with a debunk of the "Coriolis force" - I already know)

urinals

[scubacuda]

Maybe he could make a urinal that does that.

Perhaps some sort of spinoff of Marcel Duchamp's 1917 work of "art" [the-artfile.com].

Those crazy dadaists! [bbc.co.uk]

Re:England's Dean Kamen

[Anonymous Coward]

His vacuum cleaner is one of the hands-down coolest devices I have ever owned.

Cool. Finally something for the female geeks.

Re:This is really neat.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only exercise my brain gets outside of /.

My sympathies, really...

Slashthink

[miu]

That's exactly what patents were created for! To allow the "little guy" to innovate, and benefit from those innovations.

No!!! IP laws are evil! They are outdated and wrong! There is no purpose to them other than giving the man a tool to keep his jackboot on my neck!

Re:It's not a waterfall then, is it?

[Paradise Pete]

If it's the opposite of a waterfall he could call it a water spring. Sadly, that name is taken.

Water Flowing Upward???

[NeoMoose]

In other backwards news: Duke Nukem Forever will be released next month!!!

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[hdparm]

Nothing new here - we've got plenty of those...

...In Soviet Russia.

Re:Interesting...

[Amiga Trombone]

Escher makes my brain hurt. It's so obvious something is wrong, but it's impossible to focus on it. Argh, this makes me want to gouge out my eyes.

Indeed. It reminds me of a few companies I've worked for.

Cease and Desist

[AvantLegion]

Dear Mr. Dyson, We, the FBI, have become aware of your projects. We understand that you have been reverse-engineering water, and this is in violation of the DMCA, PATRIOT, and PATRIOT II acts. You have been flagged for interrogation as a potential terrorist. Until you can be brought in, you are asked to cease all water reverse-engineering. Sincerely, Agent J. Mehoff

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[nomadic]

If you drink anti-water, do you become thirsty?

Re:England's Dean Kamen

[Currawong]

Dyson inventions truly suck!

And now he's made one that really blows!

(The air in the water feater...geddit? oh never mind)

Water Bongs

[RightInTheNeck]

The story leaves out that after the reporters were done taking pictures for the day, he put the big glass bowl centerpiece back in the middle and he showed them what it was really built for. Its rumored that everyone lost thier lighter.

Unfortunatly...

[Zep1a]

According to my supervisor, shit still does, in fact, flow down hill. Zep--

And for his next trick...

[arpy]

And for his next trick, maybe he could do a mini "hell freezing over".

Hey, then we'd all get laid! Quick, where's his phone number?

Re:England's Dean Kamen

[whiteranger99x]

I have a funny feeling he's not a /.er, yet I consider him one of the all-time great inventors.

You do see the correlation, dont you?

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[JoeJob]

Exactly. But whatever you do don't let it get wet.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[commodoresloat]

Well, that rules out antiwater. The answer, then, is clear. It is antigravity, not antiwater, that makes water go up.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[Yakman]

In normal circumstances you can pass water, but with anti-water.... ** his mind boggles **

Come on, it's obvious.. ANTI-WATER PASSES YOU!

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[edgrale]

Dude, you've just described alcohol :D

Evil Patents!

[while(true)]

"James Dyson - no stranger to court battles over patents - has presumably taken care of the necessary legal business."

I guess they forgot to check for prior art [worldofescher.com]... :)

Oh no!

[DrewCapu]

"But no he is just using pumped air - no surprise really considering hes a vacuum genius"

He's gone from suck to blow!

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[thoughtstream]

Close, but no cigar. The clue is in the article, where it's explained that a "thin later of water" is used.

In other words, he's using anti-time! By covering the ramps with a thin coating of later (rather than the usual layers of earlier that surround most objects) the water actually flows backwards in time. This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.

Contratemporal epitaxy, eh? I tell you, that Dyson's a genius!

dyson

[Anonymous Coward]

So when will he build us that sphere thingy?

Isn't Dyson the guy from Terminator 2?

[User 956]

Dyson is the man most responsible for the birth of skynet. [barnesandnoble.com] He works for a company known as Cyberdyne Systems. There he works with the badly damaged CPU from the Terminator from the first movie. By reverse engineering the technology Dyson hopes to improve life for humanity. In reality his work will lead to the birth of a machine revolution that nearly wipes man from the Earth.

I saw we find this guy and get that "Terminator hand" back, so we can destroy it. I don't care how cool this uphill water thing is.

Grammar nazi

[GQuon]

This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.

I know we're supposed to concentrate on the content, and not the form of comments. But you pulled of the rare feat of making 3 simple grammatical errors in that sentence. I suggest you order the book "1001 Tense Formations", by Dr. Dan Streetmentioner, from your favourite Internet book store, and re-fresh your grammar. Next time Read It Before You Post [slashdot.org].

Re:Interesting...

[Afrosheen]

Dude, you just helped me coin a new term:

Escher-esque Management.

Let's push it onto a few blogs and see if it doesn't end up in Wired next month.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[rlanctot]

If you drink antiwater, you die. So do a signifigant portion of the rest of us.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[CleverNickedName]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=humour

Gravity is dying!

[adamofgreyskull]

It is official; BBC confirms: gravity is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered gravity community when IDC confirmed that gravity market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all garden shows. Coming on the heels of a recent BBC survey which plainly states that gravity has lost more garden market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. gravity is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Dyson comprehensive water test.

You don't need to be a Newton to predict gravity's future. The hand writing is on the wall: gravity faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all because gravity is dying. Things are looking very bad for gravity. Red ink flows like an uphill river of blood.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[The-Bus]

Or feed it after midnight?

Re:England's Dean Kamen

[AndrewHowe]

Exactly my experience. Sad that someone modded you as a troll. My wife didn't like my Dyson. I was all like, "But honey, it's a Dyson" but she was all like, "So? It's rubbish." We got another one, I think it might be a Miele, and it doesn't half suck (in a vacuuming good way). Compared to the Dyson it's like a mini black hole.

Re:urinals

[YrWrstNtmr]

Oh, go piss up a rope.

For his next trick....

[wowbagger]

For his next trick....

Making the bubbles in a Guiness flow up! [slashdot.org]

Re:It's not a waterfall then, is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about gardening.slashdot.org? That way all the people who want to decorate their cubies could get together with the *cough*cough* hydroponics types.

Re:Grammar nazi

[Rick.C]

I suggest you order the book "1001 Tense Formations"

Duh! Normal tenses don't apply when discussing fictional time manifestations.

Additionally, grammar flames are expected to be grammatically perfect. Yours contained four punctuation errors, one hyphenation error and one misspelling ("off").

Please try harder.

Re:England's Dean Kamen

[DrXym]

Cool. Finally something for the female geeks.

And for male geeks too, assuming the suction hose hasn't got one of those rotating chopping blades in it!

Re:It's not a waterfall then, is it?

[hatrisc]

but, does water still fall? yes, so it's a waterFALL. errr... why don't we compromise and call it a water elefall.

Re:Simple... it's antiwater

[John Zebedee]

Speaking of antiwater, we need to be careful [dhmo.org] with that stuff!