Hydrodynamics

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Hydrodynamics (literally, "water motion") is fluid dynamics applied to liquids, such as water, alcohol, oil, and blood. However, this distinction from fluid dynamics as a whole is not always fully observed.

Blaise Pascal in the 1600s contributed some of the initial theory to this field. The term originates from the work of Daniel Bernoulli, based on the title of his work called Hydrodynamica (1738). He and Leonhard Euler established the general equations of hydrodynamics.

The practice was continued by Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) with the Euler-Lagrange system, Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783) discovered the Cauchy-Riemann equations, Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) with the governing equation in the potential flow named after him, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) with Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (see also the Rayleigh-Taylor, Plateau-Rayleigh and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities) and Helmholtz's work on vortices.

An analogous field of study, the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids in magnetic fields is called magnetohydrodynamics.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• Dissolution rate
• Convective diffusion theory
• Reynolds number
• Boundary layer
• Ludwig Prandtl,
• Benjamin Levich
• Osborne Reynolds
• Magnetohydrodynamics
• Poiseuille's law
• Potential flow
• Plume (hydrodynamics)
• Entrainment (hydrodynamics)