Physical Properties of Water

Physical Properties. A cubic foot of water may be taken as weighing 62.5 Ibs. and a gallon as weighing 10 Ibs. A fundamental property of the fluid is that the pressure exerted by it on any plane is always in a direction at right angles to that plane, and pressure exerted anywhere on water is transmitted equally and undiminished in every direction. Liquids maintain their level even though the continuity of the surface be interrupted, or, in more popular phraseology, they find their own level. Water may be taken for practical purposes to be incompressible, and this property, together with the power of transmissibility of pressure, is advantageously applied in hydraulic rams.

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