Pascals Principles

Reported by Maria Danica C. De Villa

Outline:
History
Pascals Principle
Formula
Sample Problems

The principle was

named after the
French
mathematician
and philosopher
Blaise Pascal who
discovered it in
the 1600s.

Pascal's

law says that when the

pressure at any point in a static
fluid in a closed system is
changed, the change in pressure
will disperse equally throughout
the fluid. That is, the pressure at
a point far away from the region
of change will change by the
same amount as a point nearby.

This

fundamental characteristic of
fluids provides the foundation for
hydraulic systems found in barbershop
chairs, construction equipment, and
the brakes in your car.

Because

the force applied to the contained

fluid is distributed throughout the system,
you can multiply the applied force through
this application of Pascals Principle in the
following manner. Assume you have a
closed
container
filled
with
an
incompressible fluid with two pistons of
differing areas, A1and A2. If you apply a
force, F1, to the piston of area A1, you
create a pressure in the fluid which you
can call P1.

Similarly,

the pressure at the second

piston, P2, must be equal to F2
divided by the area of the second
piston, A2.

Since

the pressure is transmitted

equally throughout the fluid in all
directions according to Pascals
Principle, P1 must equal P2.

Rearranging

to solve for F2, you find

that F2 is increased by the ratio of
the areas A2 over A1.

Therefore,

you have effectively

increased the applied force F1. In the
hydraulic lift diagram shown on the
previous page, the distance over
which F1 is applied will be greater
than the distance over which F2 is
applied, by the exact same ratio as
the force multiplier.

Question:

A barber raises his

customers chair by applying a
force of 150N to a hydraulic piston
of area 0.01 m2. If the chair is
attached to a piston of area 0.1 m2,
how massive a customer can the
chair raise? Assume the chair itself
has a mass of 5 kg.

Answer:To solve this problem, first determine the force

applied
to
the
larger
piston.

 If

the maximum force on the chair is 1500N, you

can now determine the maximum mass which
can be lifted by recognizing that the force that
must be overcome to lift the customer is the
force of gravity, therefore the applied force on
the customer must equal the force of gravity on
the customer.

If

the chair has a mass of 5 kilograms, the

maximum mass of a customer in the chair must
be 148 kg.

Question:

A hydraulic system is used

to lift a 2000-kg vehicle in an auto
garage. If the vehicle sits on a piston
of area 0.5 square meter, and a force
is applied to a piston of area 0.03
square meters, what is the minimum
force that must be applied to lift the
vehicle?
Answer:

Archimedes Principle
Reported by Maria Danica C. De Villa

Outline:
History
Archimedes Water Balance
Principle of floatation

Archimedes

a Greek
scientist discovered
an
important
scientific law related
to buoyancy. It can
be
expressed
as
Any object, wholly
or
partially
immersed in a fluid,
is buoyed up by a
force equal to the
weight of the fluid

As

the story goes, Archimedes poured

himself a warm bath one day, and
when he got in he realized the level of
the water went up. He then
determined that the more of his body
he put in the bath, the higher the
water level went.

What is the Science Behind Archimedes Principle?

Water

Balance (Creative Commons)

He realized that an object immersed
in water always displaced a volume
of water equal to its own volume.
This formed the basis of his
experiment because he understood
that, if he divided the weight of an
object by the volume of water
displaced, he would know its density.

For a fully submerged object, Archimedes' principle

can be reformulated as follows:

then inserted into the quotient of weights, which has

been expanded by the mutual volume

yields the formula below. The density of the

immersed object relative to the density of the fluid
can easily be calculated without measuring any
volumes:

Sample problem
A

rectangular barge 300cm long

and 200 cm wide floats at the
edge of a fresh water lake. A
horse jumps into the barge and
the barge sinks 12cm. How much
does the horse weigh?
Volume = length x width x height
= 300cm x 200cm x 12cm
= 720, 000 cm3 of displaced
water

Density

of freshwater = 1g/cm3
720, 000 cm3 = 720, 000 g
720, 000 g = 720 kg

The weight of the horse is 720 kg.

Principle of floatation
Archimedes'

principle
shows
buoyant force and displacement of
fluid. However, the concept of
Archimedes' principle can be applied
when considering why objects float.
Proposition 5 of Archimedes' treatise
On Floating Bodies states that:
Any floating object displaces its own
weight of fluid.
Archimedes of Syracuse

Consider

a 1-ton block of solid iron. As

iron is nearly eight times denser than
water, it displaces only 1/8 ton of water
when submerged, which is not enough to
keep it afloat. Suppose the same iron
block is reshaped into a bowl. It still
weighs 1 ton, but when it is put in water,
it displaces a greater volume of water
than when it was a block. The deeper
the iron bowl is immersed, the more
water it displaces, and the greater the
buoyant force acting on it.

When any boat displaces a weight of

water equal to its own weight, it
floats. This is often called the
"principle of floatation": A floating
object displaces a weight of fluid
equal to its own weight. Every ship,
submarine, and dirigible must be
designed to displace a weight of fluid
at least equal to its own weight. A
10,000-ton ship must be built wide
enough to displace 10,000 tons of
water before it sinks too deep in the

Thank you for

listening!