Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T01:18:46.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

III.—Experimental Researches into the Laws of Certain Hydrodynamical Phenomena that accompany the Motion of Floating Bodies, and have not previously been reduced into conformity with the known Laws of the Resistance of Fluids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

Extract

In the summer of 1834, I was led to examine with considerable interest some of the phenomena of fluids, from the circumstance of having been consulted upon the means of improving a system of navigation to be conducted at unusually high velocities. Being well aware, however, of the very imperfect state of that part of Theoretical Hydrodynamics which relates to the Resistance of Fluids to the Motion of Floating Bodies, and that there had been found in its application to the solution of practical questions, discrepancies so wide between the predicted results and the observed phenomena, as to render the principles of the theory exceedingly false guides, when followed as maxims of art, I felt i t impossible to recommend conscientiously any mode of procedure founded on defective principles, and I therefore determined to undertake a series of investigations concerning the laws of the resistance of fluids, and the means of applying them to the formation of rules for the arts of practical navigation and naval architecture. In this investigation, I have now been engaged during the leisure of two summers, and I am still continuing to prosecute the investigation.

Type
Transactions
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1839

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 64 note * This experiment was in a channel 12.3 feet wide.

page 64 note † These three examples were in a channel 12.3 feet wide.