Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/311

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Sec. VI.]
of natural philosophy.
305

CD, Od, will be in the same ratio. Therefore the forces, being proportional to those arcs CD, Od, will remain in the same ratio as at the beginning, and therefore the bodies will continue describing together arcs in the same ratio. Therefore the forces and velocities and the remaining arcs CD, Od, will be always as the whole arcs CB, OB, and therefore those remaining arcs will be described together. Therefore the two bodies D and d will arrive together at the places C and O; that which moves in the non-resisting medium, at the place C, and the other, in the resisting medium, at the place O. Now since the velocities in C and O are as the arcs CB, OB, the arcs which the bodies describe when they go farther will be in the same ratio. Let those arcs be CE and Oe. The force with which the body D in a non-resisting medium is retarded in E is as CE, and the force with which the body d in the resisting medium is retarded in e, is as the sum of the force Ce and the resistance CO, that is, as Oe; and therefore the forces with which the bodies are retarded are as the arcs CB, OB, proportional to the arcs CE, Oe; and therefore the velocities, retarded in that given ratio, remain in the same given ratio. Therefore the velocities and the arcs described with those velocities are always to each other in that given ratio of the arcs CB and OB; and therefore if the entire arcs AB, aB are taken in the same ratio, the bodies D and d will describe those arcs together, and in the places A and a will lose all their motion together. Therefore the whole oscillations are isochronal, or are performed in equal times; and any parts of the arcs, as BD, Bd, or BE, Be, that are described together, are proportional to the whole arcs BA, Ba.   Q.E.D.

Cor. Therefore the swiftest motion in a resisting medium does not fall upon the lowest point C, but is found in that point O, in which the whole arc described Ba is bisected. And the body, proceeding from thence to a, is retarded at the same rate with which it was accelerated before in its descent from B to O.


PROPOSITION XXVI. THEOREM XXI.

Funependulous bodies, that are resisted in the ratio of the velocity, have their oscillations in a cycloid isochronal.

For if two bodies, equally distant from their centres of suspension, describe, in oscillating, unequal arcs, and the velocities in the correspondent parts of the arcs be to each other as the whole arcs; the resistances, proportional to the velocities, will be also to each other as the same arcs. Therefore if these resistances be subducted from or added to the motive forces arising from gravity which are as the same arcs, the differences or sums will be to each other in the same ratio of the arcs; and since the increments and decrements of the velocities are as these differences or sums, the velocities will be always as the whole arcs; therefore if the velocities are in any one case as the whole arcs, they will remain always in the same