will be propagated on all sides from that tremulous body, as from a common centre, in superficies nearly spherical and concentrical. An example of this we have in waves excited by shaking a finger in water, which proceed not only forward and backward agreeably to the motion of the finger, but spread themselves in the manner of concentrical circles all round the finger, and are propagated on every side. For the gravity of the water supplies the place of elastic force.
Case 2. If the medium be not elastic, then, because its parts cannot be condensed by the pressure arising from the vibrating parts of the tremulous body, the motion will be propagated in an instant towards the parts where the medium yields most easily, that is, to the parts which the tremulous body would otherwise leave vacuous behind it. The case is the same with that of a body projected in any medium whatever. A medium yielding to projectiles does not recede in infinitum, but with a circular motion comes round to the spaces which the body leaves behind it. Therefore as often as a tremulous body tends to any part, the medium yielding to it comes round in a circle to the parts which the body leaves; and as often as the body returns to the first place, the medium will be driven from the place it came round to, and return to its original place. And though the tremulous body be not firm and hard, but every way flexible, yet if it continue of a given magnitude, since it cannot impel the medium by its tremors any where without yielding to it somewhere else, the medium receding from the parts of the body where it is pressed will always come round in a circle to the parts that yield to it. Q.E.D.
Cor. It is a mistake, therefore, to think, as some have done, that the agitation of the parts of flame conduces to the propagation of a pressure in rectilinear directions through an ambient medium. A pressure of that kind must be derived not from the agitation only of the parts of flame, but from the dilatation of the whole.
PROPOSITION XLIV. THEOREM XXXV.
- If water ascend and descend alternately in the erected legs KL, MN, of a canal or pipe; and a pendulum be constructed whose length between the point of suspension and the centre of oscillation is equal to half the length of the water in the canal; I say, that the water will ascend and descend in the same times in which the pendulum oscillates.
I measure the length of the water along the axes of the canal and its legs, and make it equal to the sum of those axes; and take no notice of the resistance of the water arising from its attrition by the sides of the canal. Let, therefore, AB, CD, represent the mean height of the water in both legs; and when the water in the leg KL ascends to the height EF, the water will descend in the leg MN to the height GH. Let P be a pendulous
