Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/552

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
546
the system of the world.

up for some time, there will be force enough to generate all that quantity of tides which we really find in the ocean.

Thus we have seen that these forces are sufficient to move the sea. But, so far as I can observe, they will not be able to produce any other effect sensible on our earth; for since the weight of one grain in 4000 is not sensible in the nicest balance; and the sun's force to move the tides is 12868200 less than the force of gravity; and the sum of the forces of both moon and sun, exceeding the sun's force only in the ratio of 6⅓ to 1, is still 2032890 times less than the force of gravity; it is evident that both forces together are 500 times less than what is required sensibly to increase or diminish the weight of any body in a balance. And, therefore, they will not sensibly move any suspended body; nor will they produce any sensible effect on pendulums, barometers, bodies swimming in stagnant water, or in the like statical experiments. In the atmosphere, indeed, they will excite such a flux and reflux as they do in the sea, but with so small a motion that no sensible wind will be thence produced.

If the effects of both moon and sun in raising the tides (p. 454), as well as their apparent diameters, were equal among themselves, their absolute forces would (by Cor. XIV, Prop. LXVI) be as their magnitudes. But the effect of the moon is to the effect of the sun as about 5⅓ to 1; and the moon's diameter less than the sun's in the ratio of 31½ to 32⅓, or of 45 to 46. Now the force of the moon is to be increased in the ratio of the effect directly, and in the triplicate ratio of the diameter inversely. Whence the force of the moon compared with its magnitude will be to the force of the sun compared with its magnitude in the ratio compounded of 5⅓ to 1, and the triplicate of 45 to 46 inversely, that is, in the ratio of about 5710 to 1. And therefore the moon, in respect of the magnitude of its body, has an absolute centripetal force greater than the sun in respect of the magnitude of its body in the ratio to 5710 to 1, and is therefore more dense in the same ratio.

In the time of 27d.7h.43', in which the moon makes its revolution about the earth, a planet may be revolved about the sun at the distance of 18,954 diameters of the sun from the sun's centre, supposing the mean apparent diameter of the sun to be 3215'; and in the same time the moon may be revolved about the earth at rest, at the distance of 30 of the earth's diameters. If in both cases the number of diameters was the same, the absolute circum-terrestrial force would (by Cor. II, Prop. LXXII) be to the absolute circum-solar force as the magnitude of the earth to the magnitude of the sun. Because the number of the earth's diameters is greater in the ratio of 30 to 18,954, the body of the earth will be less in the triplicate of that ratio, that is, in the ratio of 32829 to 1. Wherefore the earth's force, for the magnitude of its body, is to the sun's force, for the magnitude of its body, as 32829 to 1; and consequently the earth's density to the sun's will be in