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Stokes' law

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expression for frictional force on small spherical object moving through a viscous fluid

~19 min read

Encyclopedic overview

In fluid dynamics, Stokes's law gives the frictional force – also called drag force – exerted on spherical objects moving at very small Reynolds numbers in a viscous fluid. It was derived by George Gabriel Stokes in 1851 by solving the Stokes flow limit for small Reynolds numbers of the Navier–Stokes equations.

Statement of the law

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Stokes' law” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.