el._"

Why does a spring bubble up from the ground?
What makes the water come up through the pipe into your house?
Why is a fire engine needed to pump water up high?

You remember that up where the pull of the earth and the sun balance
each other, water could not flow or flatten out. Let us try to imagine
that water, here on the earth, has lost its habit of flattening out
whenever possible--that, like clay, it keeps whatever shape it is
given.

First you notice that the water fails to run out of the faucets. (For
in most places in the world as it really is, the water that comes
through faucets is simply flowing down from some high reservoir.)
People all begin to search for water to drink. They rush to the rivers
and begin to dig the water out of them. It looks queer to see a hole
left in the water wherever a person has scooped up a pailful. If
some one slips into the river while getting water, he does not drown,
because the water cannot close in over his head; there is just a deep
hole where he has fallen through, and he breathes the air that comes
down to him at the bottom of the hole. If you try to row on the water,
each stroke of the oars piles up the water, and the boat makes a deep
furrow wherever it goes so that the whole river begins to look like a
rough, plowed field.

When the rivers are used up, people search in vain for springs. (No
springs could flow in our everyday world if water did not seek its own
level; for the waters of the springs come from hills or mountains, and
the higher water, in trying to flatten out, forces the lower water up
through the ground on the hillsides or in the valleys.) So people have
to get their water from underground or go to lakes for it. And these
lakes are strange sights. Storms toss up huge waves, which remain as
ridges and furrows until another storm tears them down and throws up
new ones.

But with no rivers flowing into them, the lakes also are used up in
time. The only fresh water to be had is what is caught from the rain.
Even wells soon become useless; because as soon as you pump up the
water surrounding the pump, no more water flows in around it; and if
you use a bucket to raise the water, the well goes dry as soon as the
supply of water standing in it has been drawn.

You will understand more about water seeking its own level if you do
this experiment:

EXPERIMENT 1. Put one end of a rubber tube over the narrow
neck of a funnel (a glass funnel i