by 
Anonymous
ANSWERS: 4
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For general plumbing, remembering that water flows downhill will help most of your jobs go smoothly. Once in a while if things get complicated, remember that you cannot stack water. These rules should cover almost all plumbing work around the house.
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In a pipe or tube, water can flow up or down as long as it empties at a lower pressure or altitude (or combination) than it started. I can pump it uphill of course. If you look at a rapid in a river you will see many places that the water flows up over an rock and back down as some of the motion energy of the moving water is momentarily converted to potential energy. The net motion will always be from a higher energy to lower (typically higher altitude to lower altitude) in the absence of machinery and energy input.
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I would like to expand on this question. Although most liquids will flow downhill, some liquids are "special". For example, I believe that if mercury (Hg) is cooled to near absolute zero, it will develop an interesting property. If you had a table with a rectangular block in the middle, and you poured some mercury towards it, it would move toward the block from its initial momentum. Then, as if by magic, the mercury would climb up the side of the block and then go down the other, as if it hadn't been there at all. I recall reading this somewhere a long time ago. If I am just making stuff up, please let me know.
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Not in zero gravity. It will move in any direction once momentum in any given direction occurs.
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