Saleta, Tobia, and Gil1 have proposed an interesting and easy experiment to show the effect of losses on the discharge of a fluid from a vessel and to test its implications for their theoretical model based on Bernoulli’s equation. The experiment consists of an improved version of the classical Torricelli experiment and provides a useful and interesting approach to the flow of viscous fluids while exhibiting the influence of energy losses. This note extends their work by adding some comments about the interpretation of one of the energy losses.
The model proposed in Ref. 1 is based on Bernoulli’s equation and is interpreted by using energy considerations. Because the vessel section is much larger than that of the exit orifice, the gravitational potential energy of the fluid in the vessel is balanced by the kinetic discharge energy and the energy losses. The authors make the ansatz that these losses...
