Water Falling from a Faucet

Often I’ve wondered why it feels like the force of water is stronger, the lower you put your hand under a faucet. This time, when I put my hand under the kitchen sink’s faucet, I was able to explain this “phenomena”. Because of what we just finished learning about it physics, fluid mechanics, it was easy to understand what was going on. Using the formula V1A1=V2A2, I realized that since the cross-sectional area of the falling water is smaller at a lower point under the faucet, the volume of water passing through this lower point has to be greater than the volume passing through a higher point. This helped to explain why it feels like a there’s a greater force on my hand when I put it under the lower point than under the higher point. Because there’s a bigger volume of water, or a larger amount of water, passing through the lower point, the force feels higher at this lower point than it does at the higher point. This is because the volume flow rate of a fluid has to be the same at any point; so if there’s a smaller cross-sectional area, there must be more volume, and vice versa.