Newton's Principia : $b The mathematical principles of natural philosophyNewton, Isaac
General
Newton's Principia : $b The mathematical principles of natural philosophy
Newton, Isaac
Celestial mechanics -- Early works to 1800; Mechanics -- Early works to 1800
The spaces which a body describes by any finite force urging it,
whether that force is determined and immutable, or is continually
augmented or continually diminished, are in the very beginning of the
motion one to the other in the duplicate ratio of the times.
Let the times be represented by the lines AD, AE, and the velocities
generated in those times by the ordinates DB, EC. The spaces described
with these velocities will be as the areas ABD, ACE, described by those
ordinates, that is, at the very beginning of the motion (by Lem. IX),
in the duplicate ratio of the times AD, AE. Q.E.D.
COR. 1. And hence one may easily infer, that the errors of bodies
describing similar parts of similar figures in proportional times, are
nearly as the squares of the times in which they are generated; if so
be these errors are generated by any equal forces similarly applied
to the bodies, and measured by the distances of the bodies from those
places of the similar figures, at which, without the action of those
forces, the bodies would have arrived in those proportional times.
COR. 2. But the errors that are generated by proportional forces,
similarly applied to the bodies at similar parts of the similar
figures, are as the forces and the squares of the times conjunctly.
COR. 3. The same thing is to be understood of any spaces whatsoever
described by bodies urged with different forces; all which, in the very
beginning of the motion, are as the forces and the squares of the times
conjunctly.
[Pg 100]
COR. 4. And therefore the forces are as the spaces described in the
very beginning of the motion directly, and the squares of the times
inversely.
COR. 5. And the squares of the times are as the spaces described
directly, and the forces inversely.
SCHOLIUM.
If in comparing indetermined quantities of different sorts one with
another, any one is said to be as any other directly or inversely, the
meaning is, that the former is augmented or diminished in the same
ratio with the latter, or with its reciprocal. And if any one is said
to be as any other two or more directly or inversely, the meaning is,
that the first is augmented or diminished in the ratio compounded of
the ratios in which the others, or the reciprocals of the others,
are augmented or diminished. As if A is said to be as B directly,
and C directly, and D inversely, the meaning is, that A is augmented
or diminished in the same ratio with
, that is to say, that
and are one
to the other in a given ratio.
LEMMA XI.
The evanescent subtense of the angle of contact, in all curves which
at the point of contact have a finite curvature, is ultimately in the
duplicate ratio of the subtense of the conterminate arc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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