Real World Conditions that Affect Pascal's Law in a Water Pump

Overview

Pascal’s Law states that pressure applied to a confined liquid is transmitted equally in all directions. Hand water pumps use this principle to lift water without electricity. However, real pumps do not always operate under ideal conditions. •In this project, a hand pump was tested under different conditions to study how closely Pascal’s Law applies in real-world systems. The independent variable was the condition of the pump system, including airtight, small air leak, loose connection, and increased friction. The dependent variable was the height of water lifted after a fixed number of pump strokes. •Results showed that the airtight condition produced the highest water lift and followed Pascal’s Law most closely. Air leaks and looseness caused the largest reduction in performance, while friction also reduced efficiency. This experiment shows that Pascal’s Law works best under ideal conditions and that real-world factors affect how accurately it applies.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Applied Mechanics (Junior Division) · Entry J-02-24

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• CSEF Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2026 project