Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/195

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Sec. X.]
of natural philosophy.
189

forces which act upon the bodies are equal at the beginning, and always proportional to the spaces to be described TR, LG, and therefore if TR and LG are equal, are also equal in the places T and L, it is plain that those bodies describe at the beginning equal spaces ST, HL, and therefore are still acted upon equally, and continue to describe equal spaces. Therefore by Prop. XXXVIII, the time in which the body describes the arc ST is to the time of one oscillation, as the arc HI the time in which the body H arrives at L, to the semi-periphery HKM, the time in which the body H will come to M. And the velocity of the pendulous body in the place T is to its velocity in the lowest place R, that is, the velocity of the body H in the place L to its velocity in the place G; or the momentary increment of the line HL to the momentary increment of the line HG (the arcs HI, HK increasing with an equable flux) as the ordinate LI to the radius GK, or as to SR. Hence, since in unequal oscillations there are described in equal time arcs proportional to the entire arcs of the oscillations, there are obtained from the times given, both the velocities and the arcs described in all the oscillations universally. Which was first required.

Let now any pendulous bodies oscillate in different cycloids described within different globes, whose absolute forces are also different; and if the absolute force of any globe QOS be called V, the accelerative force with which the pendulum is acted on in the circumference of this globe, when it begins to move directly towards its centre, will be as the distance of the pendulous body from that centre and the absolute force of the globe conjunctly, that is, as CO V. Therefore the lineola HY, which is as this accelerated force CO V, will be described in a given time; and if there be erected the perpendicular YZ meeting the circumference in Z, the nascent arc HZ will denote that given time. But that nascent arc HZ is in the subduplicate ratio of the rectangle GHY, and therefore as . Whence the time of an entire oscillation in the cycloid QRS (it being as the semi-periphery HKM, which denotes that entire oscillation, directly; and as the arc HZ which in like manner denotes a given time inversely) will be as GH directly and inversely; that is, because GH and SR are equal, as , or (by Cor. Prop. L,) as . Therefore the oscillations in all globes and cycloids, performed with what absolute forces soever, are in a ratio compounded of the subduplicate ratio of the length of the string directly, and the subduplicate ratio of the distance between the point of suspension and the centre of the globe inversely, and the subduplicate ratio of the absolute force of the globe inversely also.   Q.E.I.