| has gloss | eng: A Feynman sprinkler, also referred to as a Feynman inverse sprinkler or as a reverse sprinkler, is a sprinkler-like device which is submerged in a tank and made to suck in the surrounding fluid. A regular sprinkler has nozzles arranged at angles on a freely rotating wheel such that when water is pumped out of them, the resulting jets rotate the wheel; a Catherine wheel works on the same principle. The question of which way an inverse sprinker would turn (so, with the sprinker sucking the water in rather than pumping it out) was the subject of an intense and remarkably long-lived debate. The problem is now commonly associated with theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who mentions it in his popular autobiographical book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. The problem did not originate with Feynman, however, nor did he publish a solution to it. |
