A team of researchers at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences has discovered new laws governing the flow of fluids, contradicting previously known laws. Their discovery, which was based on experiments with drinking straws and metallic pipes, led to the derivation of a universal mathematical formula that can predict fluid flow in any pipe or tube, which could have significant implications for fields such as medicine and engineering.
“The pipe-flow problem has always been one of the most basic and important in the study of fluid mechanics, and in many ways, the field was developed to address this problem,” explains Ristroph, director of NYU’s Applied Mathematics Laboratory, where the research was conducted. “Our data showed that the famous and classical laws for flow friction are only accurate for some combinations of flow speeds and pipe sizes,” explains Ristroph. “We mapped out the conditions when the existing laws don’t work well, and we found a good example right under our noses: drinking through a straw.”
The data on straws and similarly sized pipes did not match any of the known laws, which are named for their discoverers, the scientists Evangelista Torricelli and Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille, among others.