I Turn a Water Gun Into a Shock Absorber and Explain Shocks, Springs, Suspension like Never Before

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The location of the holes. That's the only difference between a water gun and a shock absorber. Although they do very different things the squirt gun and the shock absorber work on the exact same operating principle
This is the case because both water and oil are incompressible liquids and
there are several factors at play here. The first one is of course the outlet hole or the nozzle. It is a restriction to flow and to overcome this restriction we must apply a force. The smaller the nozzle the greater the force required to push water through it.
The second thing we must overcome is the internal friction or the viscous forces within the water. The greater the amount of water we are trying to push within the same period of time the greater the internal friction both between the molecules of the water and between the water and the walls of the pipe. The greater the friction the greater the force needed to overcome it
And finally, we have to deal with increasing pressure. Water is an incompressible fluid which means that when we try to compress it its volume doesn’t change significantly but its pressure still increases and the greater the amount of water we are trying to move through the small nozzle the more the pressure of the water behind the nozzle increases. As this pressure increases it acts against the force of our hand so we must keep increasing our force exponentially if we want to increase the amount of water coming out
Now everything we just described works absolutely the same for a shock absorber the only difference is that instead of expelling the liquid outside we move it from one side of the piston to the other. And instead of our hand creating the force we have bumps or other road imperfections. So the greater the bump and the faster we approach it the greater the force acting on the shock absorber. Of course, most vehicles are heavier than humans and are capable of moving at much greater speeds which is why they’re capable of producing much greater forces.
This is why we run oil instead of water inside vehicular shocks. Oil is incompressible just like water so the same physics principles apply but oil is much more viscous in other words it has a much greater internal friction and a greater resistance to flow which is why we require a substantially increased force to move it from one side of the piston to the other. We can also manipulate other parameters of a shock absorber to make it capable of absorbing greater forces and more suitable for a particular application. For example, off-road applications tend to face great forces due to the very irregular terrain. This is why off-road shocks will usually have a greater stroke or the maximum top-to-bottom piston distance compared to shocks for regular road-going vehicles. A greater force acting on the shocks will push the piston further into the shock body. The greater the distance the piston can travel the greater the maximum force that the shock absorber can handle before bottoming out.
A spring can compress when faced with a force so it can also absorb all kinds of forces by compressing more for greater forces and less for smaller ones….well yes that is technically true but a spring on its own is still kinda useless. Number one 1. Depending on the direction of how the force is applied and released the spring can easily bend side to side and in all sorts of funky ways. The shock anchors the spring and ensures that it can only move up and down.
The other problem is that when springs release after being compressed they tend to oscillate. Or bounce up and down until it returns to its equilibrium or stable position. Of course, the only vehicle oscillations comfortable for vehicle occupants are the ones produced by them with all external oscillations of the vehicle being undesirable. And it is precisely these spring oscillations that are also absorbed by the shock absorber. So as you can see the the shock absorber and the spring make a perfect team. The shock absorber prevents the spring from moving side to side and from oscillating whereas the spring prevents the shock absorber piston from being stuck at the bottom of the shock body.
But here’s one more, less evident problem, that we haven’t discussed and that is cavitation the greatest enemy of all shock absorbers. Cavitation can be best described as the appearance of air bubbles inside the oil. These bubbles will usually form during rapid piston movement and they can occur both during suspension compression and suspension extension.
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