Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/340

1831.] centre of vibration. When the vibrations were strong, these assumed a revolving motion, rolling towards the centre at the part in contact with the membrane, and from it at the part nearest the glass; thus illustrating in the clearest manner the double currents caged up between the glass and the membrane. The effect was well shown by carbonate of magnesia.

30. Sometimes, when the plate was held down very close and tight, and the vibrations were few and large, the powder was all blown out at the edge; for then the whole arrangement acted as a bellows; and as the entering air travelled with much less velocity than the expelled air, and as the forces of the currents are as the squares of the velocity, the issuing air carried the powder more forcibly than the air which passed in, and finally threw it out.

31. A thin plate of mica laid loosely upon the vibrating membrane showed the rotating concentric lines exceedingly well.

32. From these experiments on plates and surfaces vibrating in air, it appears that the forms assumed by the determination of light powders towards the places of most intense vibration, depend, not upon any secondary mode of division, or upon any immediate and peculiar action of the plate, but upon the currents of air necessarily formed over its surface, in consequence of the extra-mechanical action of one part beyond another. In this point of view the nature of the medium in which those currents were formed ought to have great influence over the phenomena; for the only reason why silica as sand should pass towards the quiescent lines, whilst the same silica as fine powder went from them, is, that in its first form the particles are thrown up so high by the vibrations as to be above the currents, and that if they were not thus thrown out of their reach they would be too heavy to be governed by them; whilst in they second form they are not thrown out of the lower current, except near the principal place of oscillation, and are so light as to be carried by it in whatever direction it may proceed.

33. In the exhausted receiver of the air-pump, therefore, the phenomena ought not to occur as in air; for as the force of the currents would be there excessively weakened, the light powders ought to assume the part of heavier grains in the air.