The Boston School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy: Embracing the Elementary Principles of Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Hydraulics ... with a Description of the Steam and Locomotive Engines

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Marsh, Capen, Lyon & Webb, 1839 - Astronomy - 218 pages
 

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Page 20 - ... to counteract the retarding effects of friction and the resistance of the air. The wheels show how many swings or beats of the pendulum have taken place, because at every beat, a tooth of the last wheel is allowed to pass. Now, if this wheel...
Page 70 - By his admirable contrivances it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease and precision and ductility with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, or rend an oak, is as nothing to it.
Page 148 - Mars a rather large pin's head, on a circle of 654 feet; Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas, grains of sand, in orbits of from...
Page 154 - E to A, from A to B, from B to C, and from C to...
Page 8 - A Circle is a plane figure bounded by a curved line called a circumference, every point of which is equally distant from a point within called the centre.
Page 106 - This is proved by the following considerations. First, A rainbow is never seen except when rain is falling, and the sun shining at the same time ; and that the sun and the bow are always in opposite parts of the heavens ; and, secondly, that the same appearance may be produced artificially, by...
Page 147 - They are, therefore, sometimes nearer to the sun than at others. The mean distance is the medium between their greatest and least distance. Those planets which are nearer to the sun than the earth are called inferior planets, because their orbits are within that of the earth ; and those which are farther from the sun are called superior planets, because their orbits are outside that of the earth.
Page 143 - It consists of a bar of soft iron, bent into tLe form of a horse-shoe, and wound with twenty-six strands of copper bellwire, covered with cotton threads, each thirty-one feet long ; about eighteen inches of the ends are left projecting, so that only twenty-eight feet of each actually surround the iron. The aggregate length of the coils is therefore 728 feet. Each strand 27* j Explain Fig.
Page 27 - ... time that the axle describes a small one, therefore the power is increased in the same proportion as the circumference of the wheel is greater than that of the axle. If the velocity of the wheel is...

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