Page:Essay on the theory of capillary phenomena. Theory of surface adhesion of liquid (1879).pdf/2



Newton drank in his "Optics" that as the water rose inside a capillary tube or between parallel plates and gave an explanation of the law found by Jurin's experiment, according to which the rise is inversely proportional to the tube diameter or the distance between the plates. Newton's explanation is based on considerations whose validity is doubtful, but he did not give them sufficient development. Earliest attempts to construct a mathematical theory of capillary phenomena were undertaken by Daniel Bernoulli and Alexis Clairaut. Bernoulli himself admits that he could not determine the law of the rise. Clairaut did not give an analytical conclusion of Jurin's law, and the conclusions he came to were still too vague. The first successful explanation of the theory capillary phenomena belongs to Seiner, who