What is Bernoulli's principle?

Bernoulli's principle states that in steady, incompressible flow, an increase in fluid speed comes with a decrease in pressure — used to explain lift on wings, venturi meters, and many piping phenomena.

Exam tip: keep SI units consistent end-to-end, write the governing relation symbolically before substituting, and sanity-check magnitude and sign.

Understand the concept

For ideal fluid flow along a streamline, the sum of pressure energy, kinetic energy, and potential energy per unit volume stays constant. In practice, real fluids have losses from friction and turbulence, but Bernoulli gives a useful first estimate.

Engineering uses

Aircraft wing design, carburetors and injectors, pipe flow measurement (venturi and orifice plates), pump cavitation analysis, and sports ball trajectories all reference Bernoulli-related effects.

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