Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/110

. But when the body is arrived at B, suppose that a centripetal force acts at once with a great impulse; and, turning aside the body from the right line Bc, compels it afterwards to continue its motion along the right line BC. Draw cC parallel to BS meeting BC in C; and at the end of the second part of the time, the body (by Cor. I. of the Laws) will be found in C, in the same plane with the triangle ASB. Join SC, and, because SB and Cc are parallel, the triangle SBC will be equal to the triangle SBc, and therefore also to the triangle SAB. By the like argument, if the centripetal force acts successively in C, D, E. &c.; and makes the body, in each single particle of time, to describe the right lines CD, DE, EF, &c., they will all lie in the same plane; and the triangle SCD will be equal to the triangle SBC, and SDE to SCD, and SEF to SDE. And therefore, in equal times, equal areas are described in one immovable plane: and, by composition, any sums SADS, SAFS, of those areas, are one to the other as the times in which they are described. Now let the number of those triangles be augmented, and their breadth diminished in infinitum; and (by Cor. 4, Lem. III.) their ultimate perimeter ADF will be a curve line: and therefore the centripetal force, by which the body is perpetually drawn back from the tangent of this curve, will act continually; and any described areas SADS, SAFS, which are always proportional to the times of description, will, in this case also, be proportional to those times. Q.E.D.

. 1. The velocity of a body attracted towards an immovable centre, in spaces void of resistance, is reciprocally as the perpendicular let fall from that centre on the right line that touches the orbit. For the velocities in those places A, B, C, D, E, are as the bases AB, BC, CD, DE, EF, of equal triangles; and these bases are reciprocally as the perpendiculars let fall upon them.

. 2. If the chords AB, BC of two arcs, successively described in equal times by the same body, in spaces void of resistance, are completed into a parallelogram ABCV, and the diagonal BV of this parallelogram; in the position which it ultimately acquires when those arcs are diminished in infinitum, is produced both ways, it will pass through the centre of force.

. 3. If the chords AB, BC, and DE, EF, of arcs described in equal