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The mystery of Feynman’s sprinkler is solved at last

A puzzle named after the Nobel-prizewinning physicist has been solved by experiments with a submerged sprinkler.
Video of an S-shaped sprinkler apparatus sucking in water, lit up green against a black background.

Scientists revealed the flow of water inside a sprinkler in suction mode. Credit: NYU’s Applied Math Lab

An experiment has settled a controversy about how a type of sprinkler would spin if it sucked water in1 — a riddle made famous by the US physicist Richard Feynman.

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Nature 626, 237 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00246-x

References

  1. Wang, K., Sprinkle, B., Zuo, M. & Ristroph, L. Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 044003 (2024).

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