SYPHON, or crane, is a bent tube with one leglonger than the other, so that its orifice may be lower ; if then the air is sucked out the short leg, being in a fluid will continue to flow till the surface is below the level of the orifice ; or if the syphon is filled before it is immersed at the short end, the fluid will run out at the lower end, and will be followed as before. The syphon, for many domestic purposes, is most convenient.
Syphons are used to raise water over banks.
Mr. 0. P. Laird, a farmer at Oneida Castle, N. Y., has a syphon in successful operation which conveys water to his house, a distance of sixty-six rods, over a ridge of land sixteen feet high, in half inch lead-pipe, No. 1. It is discharged four feet lower than the surface of the water in the spring, and at the rate of eighteen gallons per hour.
Syphons will continue to work, provi ded they are perfectly tight, and if there is a moderate amount of fall from the surface of the water in the well to the place of delivery. Water is raised in a syphon on the same principle that it is in the suction pump, and may be elevat ed to the same Night, to wit, thirty-two feet. The objection to raising it very high in a syphon is, that air separates from water when thus raised, and the higher it is drawn the more. It is essen
tial that there should be sufficient cur rent to carry out this air as fast as it is evolved, otherwise it would accumulate and stop the water. Four feet of fall an swers the purpose. Every thing depends on the perfect air-tightness of the pipe. SYRINGE. In hydraulics, a machine consisting of a small cylinder with an air-tight piston or sucker, which is mov ed up and down in it by means of a han dle. The lower end of the cylinder ter minates in a small tube, through which a fluid is forced into the body of the cylin der by the atmospheric pressure when the handle is drawn up, and then expel led in a small jet by pushing the handle in the opposite direction. The syringe acts on the principle of the sucking pump. The syringe is also used as a pneumatic machine for condensing or exhausting the air in a close vessel, but for this purpose it must be furnished with two valves. In the condensing syringe, the valves open downwards and close upwards ; in the exhausting syringe they are closed down wards and opened upwards. (See Am GUN and Am PUMP.)