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In the diagram below, well A is an artesian well and well B is a normal well.
Well B's pipe is lower than the water table. By looking at the picture, I decide that well A would try quicker than well B, but the answer said that well B would try quicker than well A. I researched on the Internet, but all I found was how to improve your well.
Why does an artesian well dry slower than a normal well?
Well B is a normal water table well, which will have a relatively steep, tight, local, and deep 'cone of depression'. Well A doesn't have a 'cone of depression' - it has a 'cone of depressurization', which has an entirely different physical configuration. That is, wide and shallow. So the drawdown in well B will fall rapidly, whilst there isn't really a drawdown in well A, at all. Rather, the pressure surface in well A decreases until much of the aquifer - typically several square kilometres - is depressurized. Note that the two processes are entirely different. In a water table aquifer pumping actually drains the pores between grains in the upper aquifer, like water draining out of a sponge. In a confined aquifer, the yield is supplied by depressurizing the aquifer - so the saturated surface doesn't actually drain at all.
