ABSTRACT
Ancient civilizations were able to solve fluid mechanic problems, which enabled them to build boats, ships, canals, irrigation systems, bridges, and water-lifting machines.1,2 These advances were brought about without the aid of any mathematical analysis of fluid mechanics, but through trial and error and everyday life experiences. The first analytical analysis of fluid mechanics was not recorded until the third century B.C. when Archimedes (285-212 B.C.) began formulating equations to analyze the buoyancy of objects in a fluid. About 1700 years later, the science of fluid mechanics began to be routinely analyzed mathematically by men such as Newton, Bernoulli, Euler, Navier, and Stokes, names that are attributed to some of the fundamental equations of fluid dynamics.3
