2 ms·

Ah, yeah, this could be more carefully stated. At a bottleneck, the water that gets through is moving faster, but the total volume of water going through is lo

Ah, yeah, this could be more carefully stated. At a bottleneck, the water that gets through is moving faster, but the total volume of water going through is lower. It's a classic EE analogy, so people tend to shorthand it. One good and thorough explanation of the full bit is here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/question501.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/questi... What happens if you increase the pressure in the tank? You probably can guess that this makes more water come out of the hose. The same is true of an electrical system: Increasing the voltage will make more current flow. Let's say you increase the diameter of the hose and all of the fittings to the tank. You probably guessed that this also makes more water come out of the hose. This is like decreasing the resistance in an electrical system, which increases the current flow.

davyjones 12y ago
> At a bottleneck, the water that gets through is moving faster, but the total volume of water going through is lower. This is incorrect because the volume of water will be the same under I3 flow (called I-cube flow: Incompressible, Inviscid and Irrotational). Due to conservation of mass, we have mass = density x volume = density x area x speed x time Measuring the amount of volume for the same time with changing area, the only quantity that can change is the speed (recall that we have fixed the time and already assumed incompressible flow, hence density does not change). So, more area means lower speed and vice versa. But the volume always is the same under stated assumptions.