Understanding Viscosity

Get access to bonus content on Nebula and amazing documentaries on CuriosityStream - and use the promo code ’efficientengineer’! In this video we take a look at viscosity, a key property in fluid mechanics that describes how easily a fluid will flow. But there’s more too it than that! We’ll start by defining viscosity using Newton’s Law of Viscosity, that describes the linear relationship between the shear stress in the fluid and the strain rate, and how it relates to the dynamic and kinematic viscosities. We’ll also explore how viscosity is dependent on temperature - the viscosity of liquids reduces with increasing temperature, but for gases temperature has the opposite effect. We can explain this by looking at what causes viscosity on the molecular level. Another interesting aspect of viscosity that’s covered in the video is non-Newtonian fluids, like shear thinning or shear thickening fluids, for which the relationship between the shear stress and the strai