Too Much Pressure! Modeling Force-Pressure-Area Relationships
Students learn about water pressure.Copyright 2007 Mark Schellhase, Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 1.2+ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pressure_Wash.JPG
Students learn all about water pressure and how engineers design faucets. Teams build simple systems that model faucets and test them to see the relationships between pressure, area and force. This is a great outdoor activity on a warm day and gives students experience in experimentation, design and teamwork. A student worksheet is provided for guidance and data collection.
Engineers exploit the relationships between, pressure, force, area and work when designing different mechanical and fluid systems. Fluid systems may include the piping system in and throughout a single building or a whole city water system. The design of pumps and valves for the piping system include pressure and work calculations. Another example that uses the concepts of fluid and mechanical systems is the heating and ventilation system in a building—a damper in an air duct acts like a valve in a piping system, but for air instead of water.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain how water pressure changes with height.
- Describe how the area of an opening affects the force of water flow.
- Design and evaluate a model faucet.