{"id":240789,"date":"2026-07-14T00:44:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/silly-sprinklers-put-in-reverse-to-further-unravel-decades-old-physics-puzzle"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:44:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:44:31","slug":"silly-sprinklers-put-in-reverse-to-further-unravel-decades-old-physics-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/silly-sprinklers-put-in-reverse-to-further-unravel-decades-old-physics-puzzle","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Silly sprinklers\u2019 put in reverse to further unravel decades-old physics puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/silly-sprinklers-put-in-reverse-to-further-unravel-decades-old-physics-puzzle2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Each summer, lawns are marked by a familiar addition: \u201csilly sprinklers,\u201d whose loops and spirals spew water in creative ways. While seemingly frivolous in their construction, a team of mathematicians has used their design to address a long-standing mystery surrounding the laws of physics.<\/p>\n<p>For decades, scientists have been trying to solve Feynman\u2019s Sprinkler Problem: How does a sprinkler running in reverse\u2014in which the water flows into the device rather than out of it\u2014work? Through a series of experiments on custom-designed sprinklers with different shapes, the researchers arrived at a clear answer and, more generally, determined how flowing fluids exert forces and move structures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis work provides the experimental answer for Feynman\u2019s Sprinkler Problem by showing, across several sprinkler types, how <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-01-reverse-sprinkler-decades-physics-puzzle.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">the angular momentum of water flows<\/a> drives sprinklers\u2019 rotation,\u201d explains Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University\u2019s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science and the senior author of the paper, which <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2537479123\" target=\"_blank\">appears<\/a> in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each summer, lawns are marked by a familiar addition: \u201csilly sprinklers,\u201d whose loops and spirals spew water in creative ways. While seemingly frivolous in their construction, a team of mathematicians has used their design to address a long-standing mystery surrounding the laws of physics. For decades, scientists have been trying to solve Feynman\u2019s Sprinkler Problem: [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}