Hydraulics power everything we use daily, which includes toys like water pistols and transportation such as the brakes on a car. For such a crucial aspect of our lives few people are familiar with this particular physics concept and what this term really means.

Simply put, it is the process of moving liquids. Liquids are materials that can be compressed. However, to achieve this requires a significant amount of pressure. In the reverse, this pressure could be used to achieve various purposes, and the process that harnesses the force of compression is called hydraulics.

Two pistons comprise hydraulics systems. The master piston is where pressure is applied. The slave piston is the one at which the pressure is transferred to. The system permits only a small amount of force to be applied over a long distance to the master piston and the force is much greater observed at the slave piston’s final point. The principle behind this is of hydraulic lifts when used at large-scale.

This phenomenon can be explained through Pascal’s Principle, which states that pressure applied to a liquid in a sealed container can be determined without loss of every component of the liquid. 5ilsf1y8x2.