A Compendium of Natural Philosophy: Adapted to the Use of the General Reader and of Schools and Academies : to which is Now Added a Supplement Containing Instructions to Young Experimenters with a Copious List of Experiments

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S. Babcock, 1854 - Physics - 456 pages
 

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Page 188 - In the present perfect state of the engine it appears a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It regulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the number of its strokes in a given time, counting or recording them, moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock records the beats of its pendulum ; it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work; the briskness of the fire; the supply of water to the boiler ; the supply of coals to the fire ; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute...
Page 148 - A very slight declivity suffices to give the running motion to water. Three inches per mile, in a smooth straight channel, gives a velocity of about three miles per hour. The Ganges, which gathers the waters of the Himalaya mountains, the loftiest in the world, is, at eighteen hundred miles from its mouth, only eight hundred feet above the level of the sea — that is, above twice the height of St.
Page 189 - ... pony, may be seen dragging after it, on a railroad, a hundred tons of merchandise, or a regiment of soldiers, with greater speed than that of our fleetest coaches. It is the king of machines, and a permanent realization of the Genii of eastern fable, whose supernatural powers were occasionally at the command of man.
Page 66 - Fig. 30. 86. When a body is thrown horizontally from any elevation. with a velocity equal to that which it would have acquired by falling from that elevation to the earth- its random is twice as great as that height. Thus, if I throw a ball from a chamber window, with a velocity which it would have acquired in falling from the window to the ground- it will fall at a distance from the foot of the building equal to twice the height of the window.
Page 68 - Powers, are certain simple instruments, commonly employed for raising greater weights, or overcoming greater resistances, than could be effected by the natural strength without them. These are usually accounted six in number, viz. the Lever, the Wheel and Axle, the Pulley, the Inclined Plane, the Wedge, and the Screw.
Page 131 - ... plank E with a force as much greater, in the aggregate, than that impressed upon the surface of the smaller, as this surface is smaller than that of the larger column ; or (which is the same thing) as the number of square inches in the end of the piston B is less than that of the piston D. The power of such a machine is enormously great ; for, supposing the hand to be applied at the end of the handle, with a force of only ten pounds, and that this handle or lever is so constructed as to multiply...
Page 8 - M any cause which moves or tends to move a body, or which changes or tends to change its motion.
Page 247 - He says that he felt himself struck in his arms, shoulders, and breast, so that he lost his breath, and it was two days before he recovered from the effects of the blow and the fright. He would not, he adds, take a second shock for the whole kingdom of France.
Page 35 - A man in a boat pulling a rope attached to a large ship, seems only to move the boat: but he really moves the ship a little, for...
Page 189 - ... originally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out with age ; it is equally active in all climates, and will do work of any kind ; it is a water-pumper, a miner, a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller, &c.

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