Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/57

Rh so singular, that an attempt to explain them may perhaps be excused. If a gun is loaded with ball it will not kick so much as when loaded with small shot; and amongst different kinds of shot, that which is the smallest, causes the greatest recoil against the shoulder. A gun loaded with a quantity of sand, equal in weight to a charge of snipe-shot, kicks still more. If, in loading, a space is left between the wadding and the charge, the gun either recoils violently, or bursts. If the muzzle of a gun has accidentally been stuck into the ground, so as to be stopped up with clay, or even with snow, or if it be fired with its muzzle plunged into water, the almost certain result is that it bursts.

The ultimate cause of these apparently inconsistent effects is, that every force requires Time to produce its effect; and if the time requisite for the elastic vapour within to force out the sides of the barrel, is less than that in which the condensation of the air near the wadding is conveyed in sufficient force to drive the impediment from the muzzle, then the barrel must burst. It sometimes happens that these two forces are so nearly balanced that the barrel only swells; the obstacle giving way before the gun is actually burst.

The correctness of this explanation will appear by tracing step by step the circumstances which arise on discharging a gun loaded with powder confined by a cylindrical piece of wadding, and having its muzzle filled with clay, or some other substance having a moderate degree of resistance. In this case the first effect of the explosion is to produce an enormous pressure on every thing confining it, and