Blood, Water and Magicians (rain and the nile)

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Elf, 10/1/98 9:44 PM
<snip>
As for the flow rate, 2mph is probably a good guess, with 5mph being the
upper limit for non-flood flow.

2mph would be roughly 50 miles a day X 7 would be 350 miles.

But blood is much thicker than water, so even if we start with the 5mph
flow, we can expect a drastic slowing in the rate of
movement, but without correct numbers and equations its pure guesswork
trying to infer flow rates. Never the less, I rather suspect
that a Nile full of blood would start flowing slowly and fairly quickly come
to a stop as the mass of blood coagulated and
putrefied. Leading, as noted, to off season flooding as the mass of water
continued to flow down from Ethiopia and overrun the
slowing/stopping blood in the channel.

And since the Bible is quite silent about any specific acts to end the
plague of blood, one is NOT free to simply assume that it was
"turned off" at the start of the next show. The channel of the Nile was
filled, and nowhere is it said that it was just as
miraculously fixed, so the blood must be accounted for.

EDWARDS
Just did a little checking; the Nile flow rate is 3.1 million liters per
second, or around 110,000 cubic feet per second.  Of course, what we really
need is the velocity; Michael estimates 2 mph, or around 3 ft/sec, and this
seems reasonable for base flows.  For flood flows, we might go as high as
say 12 ft/s, or 8.2 mph.  This is the maximum of all velocity measurements
reported by the US Army Corps of Engineers for the Mississippi River at New
Orleans.  Even taking this high velocity of 8.2 mph (which occurs at the
lower reaches, where slopes are lowest), this velocity equates only to a
distance of 1375 miles - just a tad shy of the 4132 mile length of the Nile
River.  Bottom line?  The likelihood of the Nile flushing itself within
seven days is, umm, shall we say, remote.

Now we might have an inerrantist who specializes in fluid mechanics, and
he/she might say "but wait - you haven't addressed hydrodynamic dispersion!"
or some other such stuff.  That being the case, perhaps we should delve into
the issue of viscosity effects, as Michael alluded to (especially since the
viscosity of blood is about three times that of water) as well as surface
tension effects.  Let's really examine the issue of the roles of inertial
vs. viscous and tension forces, dynamic similarity, Reynolds numbers, Froude
numbers, and Weber numbers, shall we?

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