Sandro del Prete

The wine is flowing! Is this possible, or not?

This was nothing less than an attempt to outwit the physical laws of nature with inexorable logic of gravity. Many have tried to create a perpetual motion machine, but until now, with little or no success. The inventor of this one, however, believed that wine would flow from the bottle forever, without the assistance of any external source of energy.

The funnel to the right contains a greater quantity of wine then does the stem, on the left. The inventor surmised that the weight of the wine in the funnel would push the volume of wine on the left into the bottle, in proportion to the difference in weight of both sides. Once in the bottle, the wine would simply replace the fluid that was flowing out, and the cycle would repeat itself indefinitely.

Physical laws, hovewer, do not always obey an inventor's logic. In this case, it is not the amount of wine in the funnel but the height of the funnel that is important. The funnel will fill its rim; the excess wine will flow over it and be lost. The level of the wine in the bottle will sink to the level of the funnel's rim, and it will finally cease to flow.