High-School Outreach: Viscosity Estimation Using Python Environment

Viscosity is a fundamental property of fluids that governs flow behavior, energy dissipation, and material performance in applications ranging from engineering to biology. Traditionally, measuring viscosity requires viscometers or complex experimental setups, posing cost and accessibility barriers for educators and hobbyists. This project presents a low-cost, portable alternative for measuring viscosity using Stokes' law and video analysis of a falling sphere in liquid captured with a DSLR or smartphone camera. Image analysis was performed using open-source Python tools, such as OpenCV, Matplotlib, and SciPy. The program tracks the falling sphere and estimates its velocity using the images acquired from the mobile device, and then calculates the viscosity of the liquid using Stokes' Law. Results demonstrate that viscosity can be estimated with as little as 1% uncertainty using a DSLR and within 2% using a smartphone. This approach offers an accurate, affordable, and accessible solution for estimating viscosity, empowering educators and students to explore fluid dynamics without specialized equipment. This code is open-source and published online, along with sample data on GitHub for all to use: https://github.com/Deluxify-llc/Viscum.