The efflux problem: how hydraulics became divorced from hydrodynamics

Abstract

The efflux problem deals with the outflow of water through an orifice in a vessel, the flow over the crest of a weir and some other ways of discharge. The difficulties to account for such fluid motions in terms of a mathematical theory made it a notorious problem throughout the history of hydraulics and hydrodynamics. The treatment of the efflux problem, therefore, reflects the diverging routes along which hydraulics became an engineering science and hydrodynamics a theoretical science out of touch with applications. By the twentieth century, the presentation of the efflux problem in textbooks on hydraulics had almost nothing in common with that in textbooks on hydrodynamics.