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LIFE STORY OF A RAIN SPLASH

s you have watched a rain drop falling in a pond, you have noticed how, as the drop strikes, it forms a little crater. If it was a gentle rain, you ''seemed' to see a little fountain start up from the center of this crater or coronet. The next Illustration shows this fountain, but there is no coronet round it. Why ? The Coronet disappears before the fountain starts up! The reason you seem to see the fountain inside the coronet is that the picture of the coronet which is made in your eye when the drop strikes has not faded before the fountain springs up; so you ''seem' to see them both at once.

Our Pictures were taken by Professor A. M. Worthington of the Royal Naval Engineering College in Davenport, England. He spent fifteen years studying rain splashes and taking their photographs. The first "splash" (upper left hand picture in group of three) is made by a rain drop falling in running water; the second in still water ; the third by a pebble. The series of five next below show in order the different things that happen to a splash above the water; the four pictures at the bottom of the page what happened when a rough stone was dropped twenty two feet. The first three of these show what happened above water and the next what happened below.