The Laughing River Horse: November 2008

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Ancient Inventions and their Modern Applications, Part I: The Siphon

The siphon is a most wondrous device.The principle is simple: take a length of hose, stick one end in a full container, the other end in an empty container below it, prime thine hose, and thine liquid moves from one container to another as if by magic. It has helped me move home-brewed beer from a large glass container into suitably-sized bottles on several occasions in diverse corners of the world, and I shall toast the wise and creative Egyptians that invented it as soon as the next batch is ready to drink.

The bath is an equally wondrous device, and the ancients are also to be praised for inventing ablutions, part and parcel of last week's otherwise diligent trip to the country, by means of train, train, bus, and the most welcome and generous many-wheeled articulated conveyance of Monsieur Paul, Bathurst-based Monty Python fan and occasional transporter of hydrated lime.

Siphons come in many shapes and sizes: one excting encounter during the week was with the jiggler siphon, a commodious means for transferring fuel from jerrican to motor quadricycle with a minimum of said carburant transferred to soon-to-be-pastry-making hands. And for draining the soon-to-be-revealed-as diesel fuel from motor quadricycle back into jerrican, and ultimately for effecting final transfer of previously-revealed-to-be petrol (unleaded; 91 octane) into said eventually-to-be-restarted motor quadricycle. But I digress. The ancients, to my knowledge, preferred to place chariot wheels side-by-side rather than in tandem, and in lieu of the laborious and recreative functions of the modern motor quadricycle mainly employed slaves.

The combination of siphon and bathtub, on the other hand, is a great advancement for relaxing outdoor ablutions, obviating the need to carry water in buckets from the nearest convenient hot-water tap, cunningly designed not to take the thread of standard outdoor hose fittings. Procedure is as follows, assuming water tanks of sufficient repleteness and an audience composed solely of placid bovines and close friends:

1. Fit plug in laundry sink; fill sink to a suitable level at a temperature calculated to account for further heat losses in transmission.

2. Ensuring the level of the bath is below that of the sink, insert one end of any convenient hosepipe in each, while leaving the tap running. Any rise and fall between the two ends of the hose will be self-cancelling.

3. Prime hose, either by manual application of upper end of hose to tap outlet until suction begins in earnest, or by suction on lower end. Ensure upper end of hose is well submerged in sink.