re: Why are the Redskins getting so much heat?

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Perpetuated by dictionaries for nearly a century, it's surely the most persistent scientific howler in the history of the English language. Siphons – those ingenious plastic tubes we use to fill or drain everything from aquariums to petrol tanks – move liquid by "the force of atmospheric pressure".

Except, how could a siphon possibly work by a difference in pressure when atmospheric pressure is the same for the liquid at both ends of the tube? Bleeding obvious when you think about it. Even I can figure that out 25 years after I scraped through A level physics.

The prestigious Oxford English Dictionary and numerous online dictionaries say much the same. Apparently the OED has been getting it wrong since 1911. Surely in all that time somebody must have noticed?

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