How do Water Pipes Work? (The Physics of Pipes)

All around you right now are pipes. No, not the old-timey ones that people smoke, that would be strange if you were in a room surrounded by tobacco pipes, but I guess I don’t know your life.
But I digress. All around you are pipes that carry water and other liquids to and from where you are to where they need to go. Specifically, water and sewage pipes are unseen heroes that allow modern infrastructure to function easily.

However, you might be surprised that the physics of pipes isn’t as straight forward as you might thing. In fact, people go to school to get entire engineering degrees related to how water flows through pipes (civil engineers). There’s actually some pretty interesting physics going on underneath the covers of pipes, so let’s take a look and learn a little bit more about how fluid flows through these round liquid highways.

Discussing the physics of pipes is really a discussion of fluid dynamics, which is the study of how fluids behave while in motion. Fluid dynamics isn’t the least complicated thing in the world, so we’ll stick to the basics for this video.

Music:

Namaste by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Brittle Rille - Reunited by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: http://incompetech.com/