Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/363

348 quite free from mark, and fully distended. All these are natural consequences, if the film be considered as a flexible but inelastic envelope formed over the whole surface whilst the heaps were rising and falling.

103. The mode of action by which these heaps are formed is now very evident, and is analogous in some points to that by which the currents and the involving heaps already described are produced. The plate in rising tends to lift the overlying fluid, and in falling to recede from it; and the force which it is competent to communicate to the fluid can, in consequence of the physical qualities of the latter, be transferred from particle to particle in any direction. The heaps are at their maximum elevation just after the plate begins to recede from them; before it has completed its motion downwards, the pressure of the atmosphere and that part of the force of the plate which through cohesion is communicated to them, has acted, and by the time the plate ha begun to return, it meets them endowed with momentum in the opposite direction, in consequence of which they do not rise as a heap, but expand laterally, all the forces in action combining to raise a similar set of heaps, at exactly intermediate distances, which attain their maximum height just after the plate again begins to recede; these therefore undergo a similar process of demolition, being resolved into exact duplicates of the first heaps. Thus the two sets oscillate with each vibration of the plate, and the action is sustained so long as the plate moves with a certain degree of force; much of that force being occupied in sustaining this oscillation of the Huid against the resistance offered by the cohesion of the fluid, the air, the friction on the plate, and other causes. Fig. 26.

104. A natural reason now appears for the quadrangular and right-angled arrangement which is assumed, when the crispation is most perfect. The hexagon, the square, and the equilateral triangle are the only regular figures that can fill an area perfectly. The square and triangle are the only figures that can allow of one half alternating symmetrically with the other, in conformity with what takes place between the two reciprocating sets of heaps, fig. 26; and of these two the boundary lines