Yes, the same question crossed my mind too. But then I thought that it would probably end up being not a basic hydrostatics problem but a fluid dynamics one, at which point viscous flow would become important. I’m still scarred by three days spent in the late 1970’s trying to get any kind of sensibly reproducible results out of an undergraduate practical that my lab partner chose - the so-called ‘Critical Reynolds Number Experiment’. Talk about complete bollocks - the kit never gave the same answer twice and we were tearing our hair by day three. In the end we boiled the numbers down to extract the tiny quantity of usefulness from them and took our reports to the supervisor to be marked. He said (more or less) “Don’t worry, this never works, if you got any answer at all then you’ll get a pass mark and if it’s reasonably close to the accepted value then you’ll do well”. We didn’t care. We’d learned what we needed to which was that calculations in real-world fluid dynamics are at best a shot in the dark and come a very, very poor second to just building whatever it is you want and trying it.
Ann bought a hibiscus plant in a pot a few days back. This morning a single flower had bloomed - the colour is amazing. Unfortunately the camera phone doesn’t quite do it justice!!
I notice that plane makers are on that list. Our finest plane maker retired this year, difficult to see anyone stepping up. He made what were arguably the world’s finest planes, even a Hotley block plane was a sight to behold,