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The Physics Teacher -- October 2005 -- Volume 43, Issue 7, pp. 456

A Bernoulli's Law Lab in a Bottle

David Guerra, Aaron Plaisted, and Michael Smith

Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH

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Bernoulli's law is a fundamental relationship in fluid dynamics that is covered in most introductory physics courses. Basically a statement of conservation of energy for an open fluid system, Bernoulli's law is often used in labs and examples to analyze the lift force on a fixed wing or the forces on objects in a fluid flow.1–4 Although these are legitimate uses of the law, they do not introduce students to the way in which several concepts, such as Bernoulli's law and the conservation of mass, are used in combination to study the dynamics of fluid systems. Thus, to give students an easily understandable introduction to this method of analysis, we present a laboratory experience in which the drain time of water flowing out of an inverted soda bottle is measured and calculated for a set of easily interchangeable exit holes.

© 2005 American Association of Physics Teachers

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

physics education, educational aids, student experiments, fluid dynamics, water, bottles

PACS

History
Online Sep 2005

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0031-921X (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Association of Physics Teachers

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.2060646

  1. K. Bouffard, "Bernoulli's challenge," Phy. Teach. 37, 58 (Jan. 1999PHTEAH000037000001000058000001).
  2. C. Eastlake, "An aerodynamicist's view of lift, Bernoulli, and Newton," Phys. Teach. 40, 166–173 (March 2002PHTEAH000040000003000166000001).
  3. G. Gerhab and C. Eastlake, "Boundary layer control on airfoils," Phys. Teach. 29, 150–151 (March 1991PHTEAH000029000003000150000001).
  4. H. Cohen and D. Horvath, "Two large-scale devices for demonstrating a Bernoulli effect," Phys. Teach. 41, 9–11 (Jan. 2003PHTEAH000041000001000009000001).
  5. A. Alexandrou, Principles of Fluid Mechanics, 1st ed., (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001), pp. 267–324.
  6. D. Giancoli, Physics: Principles with Applications, Vol. I, 6th ed. (Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004), p. 268.
  7. Ref. 5, pp. 122–123.



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