veritasium 12 years ago
derek muller #Science

Veritasium | How Trees Bend the Laws of Physics

Trees create immense negative pressures of 10's of atmospheres by evaporating water from nanoscale pores, sucking water up 100m in a state where it should be boiling but can't because the perfect xylem tubes contain no air bubbles, just so that most of it can evaporate in the process of absorbing a couple molecules of carbon dioxide.

Now I didn't mention the cohesion of water (that it sticks to itself well) but this is implicit in the description of negative pressure, strong surface tension etc.

Derek
Veritasium