short pipe with a constricted inner surface, used to measure fluid flows and as a pump. The 18th–19th-century Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Venturi, observing the effects of constricted channels on fluid flow, designed an instrument with a narrow throat in the middle; fluid passing through the tube speeds up as it enters the throat, and the pressure drops. There are countless applications for the principle—e.g., an automobile carburetor, in which air flows through a venturi channel at whose throat gasoline vapour enters through an opening, drawn in by the low pressure. The pressure differential can also be used to measure fluid flow. See also Bernoulli's theorem.