Concept
Perfect fluid
Overview
In physics, a perfect fluid or ideal fluid is a fluid that can be completely characterized by its rest frame mass density
ρ
m
{\displaystyle \rho _{m}}
and isotropic pressure
p
{\displaystyle p}
. Real fluids are viscous ("sticky") and contain (and conduct) heat. Perfect fluids are idealized models in which these possibilities are ignored. Specifically, perfect fluids have no shear stresses, viscosity, or heat conduction.
A quark–gluon plasma
and graphene are examples of nearly perfect fluids that could be studied in a laboratory.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Glass, wax, silk, wool, hair, feathers, and even wood, perfectly dry, are non-conductors: that is, they resist instead of facilitating the passage of this subtile fluid. When this fluid has an opportunity of passing through two conductors, one good and sufficient, as of metal, the other not so good, it passes in the best, and will follow it in any direction. The distance at which a body charged with this fluid will…
Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin
States what Perfect fluid is.
Some fluids yield so very easily to the slightest pressure, that upon, ordinary occasions we are scarcely sensible of their resistance; and are upon that account little disposed to conceive them as bodies, or as things capable of pressure and resistance. There was a time, as we may learn from Aristotle and Lucretius, when it was supposed to require some degree of philosophy to demonstrate that air was a real solid…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Perfect fluid is.
But also all kinds of matter, which have been kept in a fluid state by heat, and have become solid by cooling, show internally, when fractured, a definite texture. This makes us judge that if their own weight or the disturbance of the air had not prevented it, they would also have exhibited on the outer surface their specifically peculiar shapes. This has been observed in some metals on their inner surface, which…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
Close in meaning to Perfect fluid; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Atomism.