Hello!
Okay, a little bit of backstory. My uncle was arguing that you could siphon water from one part of the sea to another part to generate electricity if they fell on turbines on the other end. He used a siphoning example , as in siphoning gas from a car on anything else really, on how it would work. He also mentioned that because of earth curvature that it would have about a 10m fall.
I immediately saw some faulty things but don’t really have the background to be so sure about it. What I mostly opposed was the fact that it wouldn’t be a fall if the pipe followed the earths curvature . The sea to pipe height would be the same at both ends and therefore not work because there is no fall in height. Even though one end would be 10m lower but that’s only relative to each other not an actual different height.
So who is actually right here?
In: Physics
Earth’s curvature has a radial bulge, yes, but so does the surface of the ocean. The difference in altitude he’s talking about is a difference measured from the center of the earth, not a difference measured from above or below sea level, and that’s the relative measurement you want to use if you want to talk about hydrostatic equilibrium.. Sea level is… the level… of the sea. So wherever you are on earth, whatever altitude the sea is at, that is already the maximum height that water would flow to if siphoned from some other part of the sea.
You may wish to read with him about the shape of a [geoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid). The VSauce video [Which way is down?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc4xYacTu-E) might also help shed some light on how altitudes work on an irregular spheroid.
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