Curiosities of Science, Past and Present: A Book for Old and YoungTimbs, John
Science
Curiosities of Science, Past and Present: A Book for Old and Young
Timbs, John
Science
Mr. Findlay states, that the dynamic force exerted by Sea-Waves is
greatest at the crest of the wave before it breaks; and its power in
raising itself is measured by various facts. At Wasburg, in Norway,
in 1820, it rose 400 feet; and on the coast of Cornwall, in 1843,
300 feet. The author shows that waves have sometimes raised a column
of water equivalent to a pressure of from three to five tons the
square foot. He also proves that the velocity of the waves depends
on their length, and that waves of from 300 to 400 feet in length
from crest to crest travel from twenty to twenty-seven and a half
miles an hour. Waves travel great distances, and are often raised by
distant hurricanes, having been felt simultaneously at St. Helena
and Ascension, though 600 miles apart; and it is probable that
ground-swells often originate at the Cape of Good Hope, 3000 miles
distant. Dr. Scoresby found the travelling rate of the Atlantic waves
to be 32·67 English statute miles per hour.
In the winter of 1856, a heavy ground-swell, brought on by five hours’
gale, scoured away in fourteen hours 3,900,000 tons of pebbles from
the coast near Dover; but in three days, without any shift of wind,
upwards of 3,000,000 tons were thrown back again. These figures are to
a certain extent conjectural; but the quantities have been derived from
careful measurement of the profile of the beach.
OCEAN-HIGHWAYS: HOW SEA-ROUTES HAVE BEEN SHORTENED.
When one looks seaward from the shore, and sees a ship disappear
in the horizon as she gains an offing on a voyage to India, or the
Antipodes perhaps, the common idea is that she is bound over a
trackless waste; and the chances of another ship sailing with the same
destination the next day, or the next week, coming up and speaking
with her on the “pathless ocean,” would to most minds seem slender
indeed. Yet the truth is, the winds and the currents are now becoming
so well understood, that the navigator, like the backwoodsman in the
wilderness, is enabled literally to “blaze his way” across the ocean;
not, indeed, upon trees, as in the wilderness, but upon the wings of
the wind. The results of scientific inquiry have so taught him how to
use these invisible couriers, that they, with the calm belts of the
air, serve as sign-boards to indicate to him the turnings and forks and
crossings by the way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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