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Physics Lesson 9.6.1 - What is an Ideal Fluid?
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on What is an Ideal Fluid?, this is the first lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Bernoulli Equation, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
What is an Ideal Fluid?
Since the mathematical apparatus used to study the behaviour of real fluid is too complicated, we use a simplified concept that helps us study fluids with a satisfactory approximation. This concept is known as "Ideal Fluid" and obviously, it contains some restrictions compared to real fluids. These restrictions are:
1- Steady flow
It is a kind of flow, in which the velocity of the fluid at a particular fixed point does not change with time. Thus, the flow of ideal fluids is steady.
For example, all liquid particles passing through the point A will have the same speed vA if the flow of liquid is steady.
2- Incompressible flow
Real fluids are slightly compressible. However, since this compression is very small, we neglect it when dealing with ideal gases and thus, we consider them as incompressible. This helps us a lot because we can take the volume of ideal fluids as constant when the number of molecules doesn't change.
3- Non-viscous flow
In simple words, viscosity represents the resistance of a fluid to the flow. Thus, ideal fluids are considered as non-viscous as they do not make any resistance to the flow.
4- Non-rotational flow
This means fluid particles do not rotate during the flow but they move only forward. In simple words, this means the fluid streams do not interfere with each other even when they have to pass through an obstacle as shown in the figure.
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 9.6.1 What is an Ideal Fluid?. There are 3 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Bernoulli Equation, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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- Continuing learning density and pressure - read our next physics tutorial: Adhesive and Cohesive Forces. Surface Tension and Capillarity
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