Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/197

 for the quadratures of figures. From the point Y draw the right line YZ perpendicular to the tangent. Draw CT meeting that perpendicular in Z, and the centripetal force will be proportional to the right line TZ. Q.E.I.

For if the force with which the body is attracted from T towards C be expressed by the right line TZ taken proportional to it, that force will be resolved into two forces TY, YZ, of which YZ drawing the body in the direction of the length of the thread PT, does not at all change its motion; whereas the other force TY directly accelerates or retards its motion in the curve STRQ. Wherefore since that force is as the space to be described TR, the accelerations or retardations of the body in describing two proportional parts (a greater and a less) of two oscillations, will be always as those parts, and therefore will cause those parts to be described together. But bodies which continually describe together parts proportional to the wholes, will describe the wholes together also. Q.E.D.

. 1. Hence if the body T, hanging by a rectilinear thread AT from the centre A, describe the circular arc STRQ, and in the mean time be acted on by any force tending downwards with parallel directions, which is to the uniform force of gravity as the arc TR to its sine TN, the times of the several oscillations will be equal. For because TZ, AR are parallel, the triangles ATN, ZTY are similar; and therefore TZ will be to AT as TY to TN; that is, if the uniform force of gravity be expressed by the given length AT, the force TZ, by which the oscillations become isochronous, will be to the force of gravity AT, as the arc TR equal to TY is to TN the sine of that arc.

. 2. And therefore in clocks, if forces were impressed by some machine upon the pendulum which preserves the motion, and so compounded with the force of gravity that the whole force tending downwards should be always as a line produced by applying the rectangle under the arc TR and the radius AR to the sine TN, all the oscillations will become isochronous.


 * Granting the quadratures of curvilinear figures, it is required to find the times in which bodies by means of any centripetal force will descend or ascend in any curve lines described in a plane passing through the centre of force.

Let the body descend from any place S, and move in any curve STtR given in a plane passing through the centre of force C. Join CS, and let