  The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the critical need for flexible mechanical
engineering laboratories simultaneously deployable in multiple modalities:
face-to-face, hybrid, and remote. A key element in the lesson portfolio of a
forward-looking engineering instructor is economical, hands-on, accessible,
'turn-key' lab activities; kits that can be deployed both in brick-and-mortar
teaching labs and mailed home to remote learners. The Energy Engineering
Laboratory Module pedagogy, described elsewhere, provides an underpinning
theoretical framework and examples to achieve these features. In addition,
instructional lab kits must demonstrate foundational engineering phenomena
while maintaining measurement accuracy and fidelity at reasonable cost. In the
energy-thermal-fluid sciences, achieving these conditions presents challenges
as kits require energy and matter transport and conversion in real time at
scales large enough to reveal measurable phenomena but not so large as to
become hazardous to users. This paper presents theoretical underpinning and
experimental verification of a fluid mechanics lab experiment appropriate for
undergraduate engineering students that 1) meets all the above-described
criteria, 2) costs less than $30 in materials, and 3) can be easily mailed to
remote learners.
