TRANSMISSION OF PRESSURE IN FLUIDS

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The three manometers are filled to the same level with mercury, the quantity being adjusted by means of a pipette.
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The young student of physics occasionally has difficulty in grasping the laws of pressure in fluids. His every day experience has taught him that a push against a solid body causes it to push in the same direction, and he often receives with some doubt the statement that pressure applied to a fluid is transmitted equally in every direction. The experiments ordinarily shown in illustration of this principle prove that pressure is transmitted in all directions, but do not prove the equality of transmission, and in spite of all the text books may tell him, the student is apt to cling to the idea that a downward pressure applied to a liquid is more apt to burst the bottom than the side of the containing vessel.