10:17 UTC:

In response to my Space Straw notes, Kevin Reid responds that it “won't work -- filling it with air before you re-evacuate it doesn't make a difference, because air doesn't have any surface tension to speak of. What's going on is that the gravity is stronger than the pressure difference, and there is no pressure below 0 so you can't improve on the strawless condition. In fact, this can be practically demonstrated. Build a closed-top tube (or a siphon), fill it with water, and you'll find a vacuum in any parts of the tube that are some smallish distance above the water level (I forget what).”

He subsequently went on to calculate it as 1 atmosphere / earth gravity / (998.2071kg/m^3).

13:53 UTC:

Still on the straw article, Mark Shoulson adds that “you can't suck water through a straw more than 10m high. The pressure pushing air up a straw is limited by the air pressure. Once you get the pressure in the straw down to zero, that's as far as it goes. Torricelli made a vacuum by inverting a tube of mercury in a pool of mercury. The column of mercury could go no higher than ~760mm. That's one atmosphere I think. That's how barometers are made. Mercury's denser than water; with water it's about 10m.”