Page:Somerville Mechanism of the heavens.djvu/212

124 of a stone dropped into still water; a series of small concentric circular waves will appear, extending from the point where the stone fell. If another stone be let fall very near the point where the first fell, a second series of concentric circular waves will be produced; but when the two series of undulations meet, they will cross, each series continuing its course independently of the other, the circles cutting each other in opposite points. An infinite number of such undulations may exist without disturbing the progress of one another. In sound, which is occasioned by undulations in the air, a similar effect is produced: in a chorus, the melody of one voice may be distinguished from the general harmony. Co-existing vibrations may also be excited in solid bodies, each undulation having its perfect effect, independently of the others. If the directions of the undulations coincide, their joint motions will be the sum or the difference of the separate motions, according as similar or dissimilar parts of the undulations are coincident. In undulations of equal frequency, when two series exactly coincide in point of time, the united velocity of the particular motions will be the greatest or least; —and if the undulations are of equal strength, they will totally destroy each other, when the time of the greatest direct motion of one undulation coincides with that of the greatest retrograde motion of the other.

The general principle of Interferences was first shown by Dr. Young to be applicable to all vibratory motions, which he illustrated beautifully by the remarkable phenomena of two rays of light producing darkness, and the concurrence of two musical sounds producing silence. The first may be seen by looking at the flame of a candle through two extremely narrow parallel slits in a card; and the latter is rendered evident by what are termed beats in music.

The same principle serves to explain why neither flood nor ebb tides take place at Batsham in Tonquin on the day following the moon's passage across the equator; the flood tide arrives by one channel at the same instant that the ebb arrives by another, so that the interfering waves destroy each other.

Co-existing vibrations show the comprehensive nature and elegance of analytical formulae. The general equation of small undulations is the sum of an infinite number of equations, each of which gives a single series of undulations, like the surface of water in a shower, which at once contains an infinite number of undulations, and yet exhibits each independently of the rest.