Let me introduce you to a super-cool, less known invention from 400 BC.
The Pythagoras Cup!
The story goes like this. Pythagoras, who is famous for his work on right angled triangles, used to serve wine to his students in this cup. This cup used to ensure that all of them get the same amount of wine and if somebody was greedy and tried to fill more wine in the cup, that student used to get his comeuppance and all the wine from his cup used to fall from the bottom of the cup. Amazing, isn’t it?
This is how it works.The cup looks something like this. A rod sort of thing protrudes from the base of the cup which is supposed to give the height till which the cup should be filled but it serves a greater purpose as we’ll see.
The cross section of the cup looks something like this.
So, when the level of wine is below the topmost point of the rod, your wine is safe. But as soon as the level of wine crosses the topmost point of the rod, this happens.
Why this happens! It follows from a very simple proof using Bernoulli theorem. You can correlate it with daily life situations in which the water keeps flowing through the pipe if the exit point is lower than the entrance point once the channel is established even though it has to go up once to follow through the channel.
Simple yet epic! :)
Comments
Post a Comment