Daniel Bernoulli and his Principle

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Have you wondered why airplanes were ever able to fly or how racecars are able to stay on the ground at high speeds? They all use a scientific concept called Bernoulli’s principle, or more commonly known as Bernoulli’s equation. His principle simply states that the faster a fluid flows, the less pressure it applies, the slower the fluid flows, the more pressure it applies.

How did Daniel Bernoulli figure out that faster fluids (when i say fluids,I mean liquids and gases) give off lower pressure and slower fluids give out higher pressure? He was looking at how water flows through pipes of different diameters. He noticed that as the water was flowing through a fairly large pipe it was flowing fairly slow, but as it entered a more narrow pipe, its speed was increased.

Bernoulli figured that there had to be something forcing the water to flow faster. He figured that the water did not change its volume when going through two different pipes, so in order to keep the same amount of volume, the water must flow faster. He applied Robert Boyle’s law to his findings. Boyle’s law states that pressure and volume are inversely related. It can also be stated as when pressure goes up, volume goes down, and vice versa. Since the volume stayed the same when flowing into a narrower pipe, the pressure had to be decreased when going into the narrower pipe.

The conclusion of Bernoulli’s experiment? The water flowing through the narrower pipe was faster than the water flowing through the wider pipe. Also, the pressure in the narrow pipe was less than the pressure in the wider pipe. Therefore, when the water was flowing through the wider pipe, its pressure was higher, and when the water flowed through the narrower pipe, its press...

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...c. 2013.

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