Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/360

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354
the mathematical principles
[Book II.

they were descending. And by these motions the times of their falling were prolonged, and increased by half a second sometimes, and sometimes by a whole second. The second and fourth bladder fell most directly the first time, and the first and third the second time. The fifth bladder was wrinkled, and by its wrinkles was a little retarded. I found their diameters by their circumferences measured with a very fine thread wound about them twice. In the following table I have compared the experiments with the theory; making the density of air to be to the density of rain-water as 1 to 860, and computing the spaces which by the theory the globes ought to describe in falling.

The weight of the bladders. The diameters. The times of falling from a heigth of 272 feet. The spaces which by the theory ought to habe been described in those times. The difference between the theory and the experiments.
128 grains
156 grains
137½ grains
97½ grains
99 grains
5,28 inches
5,19 inches
5,3 inches
5,26 inches
5 inches
19″
17″
18″
22″
21
271 feet 11 in.
272 feet 0½ in.
272 feet 7 in.
277 feet 4 in.
282 feet 0 in.
- 0 ft 1 in.
+ 0 ft 0½ in.
+ 0 ft 7 in.
+ 5 ft 4 in.
+ 10 ft 0 in.

Our theory, therefore, exhibits rightly, within a very little, all the resistance that globes moving either in air or in water meet with; which appears to be proportional to the densities of the fluids in globes of equal velocities and magnitudes.

In the Scholium subjoined to the sixth Section, we shewed, by experiments of pendulums, that the resistances of equal and equally swift globes moving in air, water, and quicksilver, are as the densities of the fluids. We here prove the same more accurately by experiments of bodies falling in air and water. For pendulums at each oscillation excite a motion in the fluid always contrary to the motion of the pendulum in its return; and the resistance arising from this motion, as also the resistance of the thread by which the pendulum is suspended, makes the whole resistance of a pendulum greater than the resistance deduced from the experiments of falling bodies. For by the experiments of pendulums described in that Scholium, a globe of the same density as water in describing the length of its semidiameter in air would lose the part of its motion. But by the theory delivered in this seventh Section, and confirmed by experiments of falling bodies, the same globe in describing the same length would lose only a part of its motion equal to , supposing the density of water to be to the density of air as 860 to 1. Therefore the resistances were found greater by the experiments of pendulums (for the reasons just mentioned) than by the experiments of falling globes; and that in the ratio of about 4 to 3. Bat yet since the resistances of pendulums oscillating in air, water, and quicksilver, are alike increased by like causes, the proportion of the resistances in these mediums will be rightly enough exhibited by the