An eagle-eyed Australian scientist has forced the Oxford English Dictionary to change its definition of how a siphon works, after he found an error in the entry which had gone unnoticed for 99 years.
The dictionary incorrectly stated that atmospheric pressure, rather than gravity, is the operating force in a siphon, researchers said.
In 2010, Dr. Stephen Hughes from the Queensland University of Technology spotted the mistake, which went unnoticed for 99 years. “If you think of a car, atmospheric pressure is like the wheels, it enables it to work. But gravity is the engine,” he said.
According to Dr. Hughes, the Oxford English Dictionary corrected the error and removed the reference to atmospheric pressure after he pointed it out. However, he said the new entry “unfortunately remains ambiguous”.
The finding was published in the journal Scientific Reports .
