Can water solve a maze? 

Awesome Steve :)

Nah. I’m good. Thanks tho

If you put small holes in the clear acrylic at the "top" of dead end pockets that are sealed it might cause the water to go more places. presumably more water would go down then out of the holes because gravity should still be stronger.

egg

Well you know Mercury has a pretty low pressure before boiling. Or you could try making a super fluid. That's always fun.

Yeah! And as a bonus it can solve mazes where the exit is above the entrance

My guess would be though, that smoke would fill much more of the maze over time, because it doesn't have the surface tension of water.

Yes, that is almost the same as at 6:36 where the pre-filled maze is fed with different colored water. If the air pockets were also pre-filled with water, then it would be exactly the same.

@Fred Nice observation. And of course ElectroBOOM would suggest smoke, a product of explosions😂

Infinity electricity kinda solves a maze in real life all the time - that's how the lightnings get their shapes

100% lol, same here! I never thought of that and I STILL can't wrap my head around *WHY* that is, lol

+1

I'm confused why it has to be two pieces?

Oh, right, because one of them never touches the other.

It can be made of 3 pieces or 4 pieces or 5 pieces

Legitimately almost didn't click because I didn't want to sit through 8 minutes of "hype" for an underwhelming reveal at the end of the video. This was not that, and I was pleasantly surprised

i mean it kinda is, not everyone has 2m subs

its just straight to the damn point

Yeah just forward the video 9 waste of time minutes

@DanX yeah!! this video is so cool!

This doesn't work in 3d mazes (multi-level)

Though generally not a problem, if you're starting from the middle of a maze (e.g. you're blindfolded and carried to the starting point, or you forgot to use the strategy until later), then there'd be no guarantee.

@TCXD11 I explained that in detail.

@lqr824 yeah, I reread that more clearly after I already posted the reply, but oh well.

I thought the same thing!

Actually it doesn’t work at all if there are any floating walls in the maze, as in walls that don’t connect to the outside. Left or right wall doesn’t matter. Sometimes the floating wall is obvious and sometimes it’s not. Oh, and it only works if you can touch the outside wall directly from the entrance.

@The Hunters At the entrance there is always an outside wall! It may be part of a 'floating' wall, yes, but then there´s more than one entrance. In that case, switch the same hand to the other wall of the newfound entrance.

@sthenzel I know. Just expanding on the conversation because that’s what I like to do.

I've always wanted to map the Paris Catacombs by spray painting a white line along the right wall.

and connect them to tubes pointing upwards so the pressure would equilibrate and you don't have blue liquid everywhere :)

I think, that mercury could solve this problem

Smart

Or pure alcohol, or add soap. Great idea!

@Steve Mould Or superfluid helium-4! 😂

I saw soap bubbles in your red/blue section so assume you used a detergent or other surfactant.

@Eric Moss omg, superfluid helium would be an amazing test as it also can crawl *up* - it'd presumably solve the maze pretty much exactly by the keep-hand-on-wall method. That said, if water was already a difficult thing to seal against, helium manages to be nigh impossible lol

Certain types of mazes*

Notice there are no loops in these?

It's actually pretty obvious when you consider a solution must exist and there are no islands

AT LEAST two (separate) parts. Not two parts. Many mazes have many separate disconnected walls. (There's no requirement for only having one possible solution in a maze.)

@Elliott That would make it 3 parts.

Or one could "lay down" the maze and leave the top open. All you'd need to make water flow in with some urgency is an upward slope (a funnel or an angled tube for example) at the entrance. One could also make a small ceiling (or height gate) at the entrance limting the height the water will reach, in order to avoid splashover. This may be less difficult to execute than laser cutting a membrane

I wonder if there's some kind of force(?) flowing upstream from the end to the start??

@Jan Bam A negative pressure difference, basically. Like pulling water through a drinking straw.

If it was a human sized maze maybe we could follow the current and also get out

The blue water is basically doing the same thing that the air did in the smaller maze. It's blocking the "wrong" paths, and instead of surface tension, there's just the boundary between two liquids of the same density - they're not going to mix very much at all in such a small time frame, so it's basically just a question of whether the blue water has anywhere to go when the red water pushes against it.

That's because the 1st pass water has blocked off all the dead ends, making it so any pressure can only be relieved directly towards the exit.

You're right, I would even say that it's pretty much only about pressure, surface tension has very little impact here. Pressure difference is nicely visible in the little siphon in the top right corner - free water surface is much lower on the right side than on the left which means that air pressure on the right is higher. And you can see why - because the air on the right is sealed off while that on the left can still escape (that happens in 5:30). You can also nicely see how the air pressure grows in the whole sealed right part of the maze. In about 5:15 the right part is sealed off and then water goes further up to top left corner of the maze (reached at about 5:27) on the left side of that seal, and you can see how the free water surface on the right side also moves up but much less, just enough to reduce volume and increase pressure of the air trapped there so that it equalizes growing hydrostatic pressure of water column on the left. Also, as the water stops flowing, the difference in height between tank above maze and surface on the other side of first siphon and that of to two sides of that column of water dividing right and left side are visibly similar (not exactly the same, because there are other siphons with uneven pressure on both sides).

'water age' is indeed a critical factor in delivery quality water. This is why municipalities and other agencies controlling water supply model and test for water age as part of the design of new expansions to an existing system. Areas of known longer ages, are regularly flushed. Additionally, modifications to the distribution system can help eliminate these regions. one tool in this fight is preventing a dendritic (tree-root) branching of the system. By carefully utilizing loops and and multiple paths, it is possible to significantly reduce water age.

This is also why I always run the tap until the water is genuinely cold, to ensure it’s not been sitting around for who knows how long in the building or the street. Sometimes it happens quickly when there must be high turnover but sometimes it takes a few minutes.

@Kaitlyn L Temperature isn't a bad guide, although the 'new' water from the street (which is buried, so likely cooler) will have to cool your warmer piping down, so once you feel the temp start to drop, you've likely got 'fresher' street water at the tap

That's why I don't trust the campaigns that say that water treatment is so good that you can drink straight from the tap. I do believe that the water from the treatment plant is great, but there's no way I trust those pipes between them and my flat, not to mention those in the building itself.

@karol306 I'm sorry that you distrust your water distribution system. I would suggest you sample your own water from your own tap and have it tested (at your own cost) against your national drinking water standards at a private, independent lab for your own peace of mind. If, in the unlikely event that your water falls outside of the national standards, your local distribution maintaining agency will be VERY interested in your results.

For the smaller maze, you can just fill a flat metal/ceramic tray with just barely enough solvent to cover the bottom. Then put the maze into it with the side you want to solvent weld. Leave it in there for like 10-30 seconds. Then take it out, and set it onto the panel you want to weld it to. Because the maze is so finicky, I'd still do the first side with the syringe. This process works for all kinds of parts and actually tends to give a cleaner, more even, weld. However, since you're using laser-cut pieces you'll have plenty of micro-cracks in them after getting them into contact with solvent (unless you tempered them afterwards), they are probably just hard to see in the black acrylic. For large pieces this works too but of course you'd need a pretty large tray (or one custom-made for the job) and a lot of solvent. You also don't need to actually submerge the pieces, just lowering them until the solvent pulls itself onto the welding surface is actually better (because it only coats the surface and because the solvent doesn't get squeezed out) but a bit finicky, you might be able to put some uncoated steel wires into it as an offset. Source: Sometimes do this at work, but for most pieces the syringe method works just fine.

Obligatory flex tape meme here

Putting in a air release valve would also work so he could avoid manually covering the holes

Also, by treating every maze surface by a hydrophobic repellent, you could reduce the surface tension friction. Would be fun to see the results and how they compare to the vacuum simulation 🙂

Wouldn't that be like creating a maze with multiple exits or paths? Not really a maze?

@Young Gandalf See them as emergency exits and hang little "no exit, staff only" signs on them. The air can be considered staff.

I wrote a longer comment about this but also if there are 2 entrances and 2 exits, you must find a path from an entrance to an exit, and the paths between each entrance and the exits connect, there is a chance the wall you follow will lead you on a path between the two entrances instead of to an exit, but that's the only thing I can think of that would defeat the algorithm, barring dropping someone in the middle of the maze instead of starting them at an entrance... or having no paths from the entrance to an exit, obv.

@Juniper Berri You can theoretically have traps and one way doors in a real maze, so that you can go through a particular section one way, but not leave through the same area - meaning that you'll get trapped in the section beyond the one way door. Or you place the exit in the "middle" part by having a tunnel up or down from one of the rooms that's only accessible through the third part of the maze.

Another solution I've seen in real world mazes is to have checkpoints in the maze that have to be reached for the maze to be considered complete.

This only works if the starting point is along the outer wall of the maze (which is _generally_ the case, but not necessarily). If you are starting from a random location within the middle of the maze, then you have no way of knowing whether the wall you touch would be connected to the exit or not.

It is also possible for the exit to the maze to be a staircase or ladder or something which is placed within the maze. That would mean that you could follow the outer wall in a complete loop and never find the exit.

Agree

Agree too

My kitchen sink agrees

@Lucas Hartmann My car cooling system agrees.

Physics agrees

yep, heaps of airlocks you get them all the time in caravan grey water pipes

just like this video

Yes, it can't be surface tension because, although he points at lots of places where surface tension happens, the water flow is stopped by the first one of those places, so the rest of the surface tension sites are irrelevant.

Yup. It's interesting that lots of times when I'm reading good info on using a simulation or simulator of/for something it's recommended to do the real thing along with a simulator. I have peripherals for simulator games but should probably get rid of them because I don't access to the real world counterpart to get the most out of the simulation.

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Also that he wasn't 'shaming' the animation creator (for lack of a better word) for not having realistic graphics but instead said things along the lines of 'he animated something I can't recreate'.

I was think there's pressure from trapped air that can't escape once there's a reservoir above that it can't pass through.

If you're able to mark the walls in any way at all, if you loop back to the same point on the wall, you are following a center wall that doesn't connect to the entrance or exit. Switch to the wall opposite and follow that one. If necessary, just keep mapping these interior walls until you get to a wall that leads to the entrance or exit. I follow walls all the time in games to fully explore areas and find places I've missed. If you're in a maze in real life and you fear you don't have all the time in the world to walk around--definitely find a way to mark your exploration or break yourself out of there.

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@E real

And now you could generate big mazes in minecraft and explore them in virtual reality... yes, the world is crazy like that today.

@Chris aka Schulbus do you mean a particular mod for mazes?

@Nikel Sad I made mazes with server plugins a couple years back. There are also "picture to schematic converters". So combining that with a normal image maze generator should also be possible. Particular mods or names i don't have, though. I only generate mazes for CNC laser action.

Dude, that sounds awesome!! I think one day I'll make this a birthday trip for my ex-girlfriend. She also loves everything logic-related. This christmas I gave her the hardest version of the Perplexus 3D labyrinth, she fucking loved it and tried cracking it for a over a whole day 😊 Have you heard of those? They are more about the motor skill to bring the ball through the maze. The hardest one is actually pretty hard! Thanks for the unintended present idea 😉

@MünchhausenMusic You're welcome! Yes, I think I know the puzzle you're referring to. I don't have one but I think I've tried it once.

It’s also why if you keep going right, or keep going left, you will always solve the maze. Unless, of course, the maze is broken up into more than 2 parts.

Which, by the way, knowing such information is good for you in emergency situations. If you are ever in a building under evacuation and it is pitch black inside, put your hand up against the wall and follow it. You will eventually reach a door and/or window.

@howard baxter Yeah, but it might only be an internal door...

That’s clever, love it!

How did you keep it from back-flowing out of the maze? I mean this method only really works because of the verticality of the maze making it so the water cannot simply flow back out of the entrance. You would likely need way more than a minute in order for the water to rise to the point where you could detect a flow is a big room. My solution to DM's throwing mazes at casters is always just fucking blow through it or use divination magic to scout the correct path, ain't nobody got time for that.

​@Shining Darkness I play as a ratfolk, so I have an unfair advantage

@Seth B how so?

@Shining Darkness Why wouldn't you exit through the entrance, as long as you get out right?

It’s definitely a possibility, but I don’t think water would flow like that naturally. It would fill everything up at once instead of being moved by gravity downwards, and thus it would have to be slanted, but however this would cause it to not fill up the other parts. This is just a hypothesis tho so like it would be interesting to see if I’m correct

Alpha Phoenix made a video showing that, it does fill everything but not like the sim

Unlike *_”cough”_* Vsause-

That’s basically what I did for the smaller ones! Question for you: is it a good idea to soak for a long time? I just dipped.

@Steve Mould Yes, you would want to soak the acrylic in the solvent to soften it, making it tacky so that when you make contact and clamp with the other piece of acrylic the two will bond in the same way that applying the solvent via capillary action does. Soak time will depend on a couple of different factors such as if the acrylic is cast vs extruded, if it has any colorants or co-polymers in it, and which solvent weld you are using (I am assuming you are probably using weld-on 3 or 4 or some other dichloromethane base solvent), and what clamping pressure you are using. You'll need to play around and find what works for you, but I would start with a 15 second soak and go from there. Since you are using lasercut acrylic, you'll need to be extra mindful of the acrylic crazing when you do this. You may need to anneal your parts before soaking, but I hope you can get away with not annealing since it can deform and change the dimensions of the part. The stresses in the crystalline lattice near the cut edge (the cause of crazing) are built up differently between laser cutters depending on the ambient temperatures, speed of the air assist, etc. If you are able to stop the cut edge from cooling as rapidly that will help with the crazing. The easiest way to do this is to lower the airflow of the air assist.