Henry Darcy

[gillip]

A man walks into a bar full of engineers. Because of his wonderful personality, rugged good looks, and his ability to down a pint in one gulp, all of the engineers immediately recognize that he is a hydrologist. Three engineers siting nearby decide to mess with the hydrologist.
The first engineer walks up to the hydrologist and says "Hey, you know that Darcy guy, he was a real idiot." The hydrologist shrugs his shoulders and says nothing.
The second engineer walks us and says "That Darcy guy didn't know what he was doing. He discovered Darcy's Law completely by accident. I don't think he even realized that water flows downhill." Again, the hydrologist shrugs his shoulders and says nothing.
The third engineer tells his friend he knows for sure how to make the hydrologist mad. He walks over and says "Hey, you know Henry Darcy was an engineer." To that, the hydrologist responds "Yeah, thats what your friends have been telling me."

No offense to the engineers out there.

[tallgirl]

okay so this joke is way over my head but I'm getting the feeling that gillip is a hydrologist... idk but I have the feeling I'm on to something here lol

[gillip]

I am a hydrologist. How did you ever guess? Henry Darcy is considered by many to be the most significant hydrologist in history. Darcy was in fact an engineer, but at that time being an engineer covered a much larger area than today. Even now many engineers specialize in hydrology. I think it would be safe to say that most surface water hydrologists are engineers, but most ground water hydrologists are geologists. Darcy's book Les Fontaines publiques de la ville de Dijon (The Public Fountains of Dijon) was recently translated into English. It is one of the few books I have ever read by choice. He performed extensive experiments to quantify the flow of water through pourous media (i.e. rock, sand, gravel). He was also a great humanitarian, supplying his boyhood home of Dijon with a water supply without fee. Darcys law is Q = -KA (dh/dl) {or some variation thereof}, where Q is discharge, K is hydraulic conductivy, A is cross-sectional area, and (dh/dl) is hydraulic gradient. With this equation, you can estimate dishcarge from an aquifer if you know K,A, and (dh/dl), or you can estimate K if you know the other parameters. I guess you could find A or (dh/dl) if that is what you needed. This law is probably the first thing you learn in a hydrology class (at least groundwater hydrology). To give you an idea of the respect hydrologists have for Darcy, my hydrology instructor told us that he lived by Darcy's law and if we wanted to pass his class we would to. He could drink a pint in one gulp, so we all listened to him.