Pin-hole water flow from cylindrical bottles

0031-9120/35/2/110

We performed an experiment on elementary hydrodynamics. The basic system is a cylindrical bottle from which water flows through a pin-hole located at the bottom of its lateral surface. We measured the speed of the water leaving the pin-hole, as a function of both the time and the current level of water still inside the bottle. The experimental results are compared with the theory. The theoretical treatment is a very simple one based on mass and energy conservation, corresponding to a widespread exercise usually adopted in university basic disciplines of physics. We extended the previous experiment to another similar system using two identical bottles with equivalent pin-holes. The water flowing from the first bottle feeds the second one located below it. The same concepts of mass and energy conservation now lead to a non-trivial differential equation for the lowest bottle dynamics. We solved this equation both numerically and analytically, comparing the results with the experimental data.