Interweaving Justice, Equity, and Fluid Mechanics to Teach the Great Molasses Flood of 1919

On January 15, 1919, a storage tank in Boston filled with several million gallons of molasses burst, sending a current of molasses coursing through the North End neighborhood and beyond. In the aftermath, over 20 lives were lost, and the total damage — to property, civil infrastructure, and the environment — easily exceeded $100 million in 2022 dollars. In this talk, we briefly recount the events of that fateful day before discussing how this event can serve as a springboard for discussions of justice- and equity-centered engineering in the context of fluid mechanics. Although the molasses flood itself is most naturally studied using (surprisingly very high-Reynolds-number) hydrodynamics, this tragedy (and the local and federal government's subsequent slow response) was fueled by a mixture of failures in regulatory oversight, environmental racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, all of which underscore the critical importance of incorporating equity principles in engineering education.