Elementary Physics; An Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: considerably until the centre of the storm reached her. The fury of the winds was hushed, and a calm of half- an-hour's duration ensued, arising from the establishment of an equilibrium of forces, the winds blowing with equal intensity inward from all sides. The wind then sprang up with increased violence, but from the opposite N.w. direction, and, after enduring for a period, the force of the wind abated, and the storm passed away. The advantages resulting from a knowledge of this law of storms, have been exceedingly great, as, by attending to certain indications, the mariner is enabled to ascertain his position relative to the centre of the storm, and to adopt the course which will most readily bear him beyond its influence. The tendency of all matter, whether solid or fluid, to assume when disturbed a series of alternating movements, known by the terms vibrations, undulations, leaves, or oscillations, might have claimed our attention in this chapter; but it is thought advisable, for the purpose of avoiding repetition, to reserve the consideration of these important forms of motion, until the laws of the propagation of motion in fluid bodies, and the phenomena of sound, light, and heat, come to be considered. Before this portion of our subject is closed, it becomes, however, necessary to examine an hypothesis, which is sanctioned by the authority of some of the most talented philosophers of the present age. In explaining the phenomena which attend the production and transmission of sound, the development and the propagation of light and heat, thepassage of electricity, and the varying modes of chemical affinity, they have stated that all those forms of force could be referred to motion, and that their development depended upon the character of the motion in action. Thus, a...