What quantity did you change?
Labs / Physics
Pipe Flow
Drag the throat walls to pinch the pipe, then open the flow rate and watch the streamlines race through the narrow gap. Squeezing the pipe forces the fluid to speed up (continuity) — and where it moves fastest, the pressure gauge drops the lowest (Bernoulli).
Pipe Flow
Drag the throat walls to pinch the pipe, then open the flow rate and watch the streamlines race through the narrow gap. Squeezing the pipe forces the fluid to speed up (continuity) — and where it moves fastest, the pressure gauge drops the lowest (Bernoulli).
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Physics explains how changes in forces, energy, motion, and matter produce results we can measure. This model lets you test one part of that relationship at a time.
Explore
Try the model
vwide 2.35 m/svthroat 8.00 m/sPwide 150 kPaPthroat 119 kPa
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Pinch the throat as tight as it goes. Why does the fluid there move so much faster than at the wide inlet?
- The pressure is lowest exactly where the fluid is fastest. Does that feel backwards to you?
- Turn up the flow rate. Which changes more — the wide-section speed or the throat speed?
- Tilt the pipe uphill. What happens to the pressure once the fluid also has to climb?
- Can you find a setting where the throat pressure falls below the pressure outside the pipe?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Name the quantity you changed, the quantity that responded, and the physical rule connecting them. Use a readout or visible change as evidence.
Check
Before you leave
What measurable result changed?
Which physical idea connects them?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.