[insert witty title]

After talking to John about people claiming to have created a perpetual motion machine I decided to do a bit of digging around on the internet where I stumbled over these devices, called Hero's fountains:


_{pictures nabbed from here}

Along with the following descriptions, here:

With no electrical cord or batteries or obvious energy input of any kind, a fountain spouts and sprays gracefully

here:

Hero's fountain derives its name from its inventor, Hero (or Heron), who lived in Alexandria circa 120 B.C.

It is described in his book Pneumatica in which Hero describes a number of appliances invented by himself and by a predecessor named Ctesibuis."

and here:

A "Hero's Fountain" is a scientific hoax. Basically it is a series of scientific bottles and tubes. When you pour water in the top bowl, it starts to drain out of the tubes, and the end of the line is a "fountain" spigot that spouts the water right back into the top bowl. It looks as it if would run forever (and if you built it right it would run for hours.)"

I love old bits of scientific instrumentation and would kill to own one of these, they look like so much fun. Unfortunately they're obscenely expensive and after having recently read this article on the home manufacture of one of Hero's engines I had absolutely no choice but to make one from things lying around the house.

Here is a diagram of a Hero's fountain:


Considering my DIY skills (pathetic at best) I really wasn't expecting the fountain to work so didn't bother making photos of the construction. On a positive note that will save a few minutes in thinking up witty captions for the blog post.

[imagine a really informative and witty "how I built the fountain" paragraph here]

Here is the finished product, constructed from empty bottles, sellotape, a couple of plastic tubes, a broken pen and a lot of blu-tack (what is it with me and making things out of bottles and broken pens?):



In theory, tipping a few hundred milliliters of water into the top of the device should be enough to get it started. Let's give it a whirl:



Ahaha! It works! A steady stream of water, approximately 3-5cm high. The fountain runs for an entire 15 minutes (!) before losing power due to a few tiny airleaks I couldn't patch up.



OK so it's not exactly graceful but what do you expect when the device is held together with blu-tack and sellotape, and hey! I made my very own pressure and gravity driven fountain. I feel like I'm this close now to having a bona fide perpetual motion machine.

I also made a video (with my mobile phone so sorry about the crazy video format). Here is the fountain in action, and here it is again. Sadly by the time of the second video the fountain had developed a slight airleak so its power would decrease quite quickly over time.

There is something very satisfying about sometimes just stopping with all the theory, sitting down with some plastic bottles and just messing about with water, exactly like some greek bloke did millennia ago.

Late edit: Handy household hint. To make things airtight you can cut the end off a balloon and stretch it over leaks. It works really well. All the red, yellow and green bits on my fountain are balloons