No CrossRef data available.
The object of the present Note is to show, by a few examples (of which, however, the last is the only one of any real importance), how easily the geometrical ideas supplied by Hamilton's beautiful invention of the Hodograph enable us to dispense with analytical processes in the establishment of some of the fundamental propositions connected with the motion of a single particle, besides many others which are merely curious; and also how they help us to understand the full bearing of some of the analytical methods. Some of the simplest of such geometrical investigations are given in “Tait and Steele's Dynamics of a Particle,” and will not be reproduced here; though a few of the results will be assumed,—as, for instance, that when the acceleration is directed to a fixed point, and varies inversely as the square of the distance from it, the hodograph is a circle, and the path a conic section, of which the point is a focus.