Physicist — Giovanni Battista Venturi (Bibbiano, 1746 – Reggio Emilia, 1822) was an Italian physicist and historian of science, a priest and professor at the University of Modena. He studied fluid motion in ducts and described the effect that bears his name: when a fluid passes through a constriction its velocity increases and its pressure drops, a phenomenon now exploited in Venturi tubes, carburettors and flow meters. He was also a careful historian of science: he rediscovered and championed Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific manuscripts and studied Galileo’s work. His activity thus combined experimental research with the recovery of scientific memory.
Trivia
He was among the first to study Leonardo da Vinci’s codices seriously as scientific documents, helping to establish Leonardo’s genius as a physicist and engineer, not merely an artist.
Theories and contributions
- Venturi effect — In a narrowed duct the fluid’s velocity increases and its pressure falls, in accordance with Bernoulli: .
- Venturi tube — Device with a constriction used to measure a fluid’s flow rate from the pressure difference.
Present in chapters
Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.