XXVI. Account of experiments made on the strength of materials. In a Letter to T homas Y oung , M.D. For. Sec. R.S. With Notes by Mr. T. T redgold
1819; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 53; Issue: 251 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14786441908652116
ISSN1941-580X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Philosophy and Science
ResumoDEAR s.t,--Iy presenting you the result of the following experiments, 1 trust I shall not be considered as deviating from my subject, ill taking a cursory view of the labours of others.The knowledge of the properties of bodies which come more immediately under our observation, is so instrumental to the progress of science, that, any approximation to it deserves our serious attention.The passage over a deep and rapid river, the coustruetion of a great and noble edifice, or the combination of a more complicated piece of mechanism, are arts so pecufiarly subservient to the application of these principles, that we cannot be said to proceed with safety and certainty, until we have assigned their just limits.The vague results on which the more refined calculations of many of the most eminent writers are founded, have given rise to such a multiplleity of contradictory conclusions, that it is difficult to choose, or distinguish the real from that which is merely speeious."I!he eonnexions are frequently so distant, that little reliance can be placed on tlaem.Fhe Royal Society appears to have instituted, at an early period, some experiments on this subject, but they have recorded little to aid us.Emerson, in his Mechanics, has'laid down a number of rule~ and approximations.Professor Robison in hi~ excellent treatise in the Encyclopcedia Britannica ; Banks on the Power of °Machines ; Dr Anderson of Glasgow; Colonel Beaufoy, &e. are those, amongst our countrymen, who have given the result of their experiments on wood and iron.The subject, however, appears to have excited considerable attention on the continent.A theory was published in the year 1638, by Galileo, on the resistance of solids, aud subsequently by many other philosophers.But however plausible these investigations appeared, they were more theoretical than practical, as will be seen in the sequel.It is only by deriving a theory from careful and wtql direeted experiments, that praetical results can be obtained.It would be useless to enumerate the labours of those philosophers, who in following, or varying from the steps of Galileo, have merely tended to obscure a subject respecting wbich they had no data to proceed upon.It is sufficient to enumerate the names of those who, in conjunction with our own countrymen, have added their labours to the little knowledge we possess.The experiments of
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