Electrified water bridge

[Magical Realist]

This is not intuitive to me. How can electrically charging water make it defy gravity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPtL3S1v4jw

[C C]

I doubt it will be the final word -- because, after 120 years of controversial attempts, a team in Tehran just recently happens to completely close the door on the puzzle by combining the two rival explanatory contenders? But OTOH, maybe not so much another notch in a converging circle of many coincidences as interest in water bridges possibly spiking over the last two years because of it.

http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.....88.033019

[elte]

This is not intuitive to me. How can electrically charging water make it defy gravity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPtL3S1v4jw

.  Evan Smith
I can't comment on the specifics, but basically its because the water from one beaker is charged opposite that of the other beaker, so the water in each beaker is attracted to the water in the other.

If that is right, then it is the insulating properties of pure water that makes it work.  Insulators can hold a surface charges.  Recall how a plastic comb run through hair can attract paper chaff.  Both the comb and paper are insulators, and the comb gets charged by friction with the hair, as with a van de Graff generator a leather belt is given a charge by friction.