A Study of Splashes

CHAPTER I. Preliminary--Methods of Observation and Apparatus

PRELIMINARY--METHODS OF OBSERVATION AND APPARATUS

There will be but few of my readers who have not, in some heavy shower of rain, beguiled the tedium of enforced waiting by watching, perhaps half-unconsciously, the thousand little crystal fountains that start up from the surface of pool or river; noting now and then a surrounding coronet of lesser jets, or here and there a bubble that floats for a moment and then vanishes.

It is to this apparently insignificant transaction, which always has been and always will be so familiar, and to others of a like nature, that I desire to call the attention of those who are interested in natural phenomena; hoping to share with them some of the delight that I have myself felt, in contemplating the exquisite forms that the camera has revealed, and in watching the progress of a multitude of events, compressed indeed within the limits of a few hundredths of a second, but none the less orderly and inevitable, and of which the sequence is in part easy to anticipate and understand, while in part it taxes the highest mathematical powers to elucidate.

In these modern days of kinematographs and snapshot cameras it might seem an easy matter to follow, by the aid of photography, even a splashing drop. But in reality the task is not so simple, for the changes of form that take place in a splash are far too rapid to come within reach of any ordinary kinematograph, and even the quickest photographic shutter is also much too slow, so that it is necessary to have recourse to the far shorter exposure of a suitable electric spark. The originals of the photographs which illustrate this book were taken by means of a spark, whose duration was certainly less than three-millionths of a second, an interval of time which bears to a whole second about the same proportion as a day to a thousand years.

In order to obtain the photographs, advantage was taken of the fact that whatever be the sequence of events in any particular splash, this sequence will be exactly repeated every time that a falling drop strikes the surface under exactly the same conditions, and the problem to be solved was, therefore, as follows:--To cause a drop of definite size to fall from a definite height in absolute darkness so as to strike the surface of the liquid into which it falls at a spot towards which is directed a photographic camera with uncovered lens, and armed with an exceptionally sensitive plate, and to illuminate the drop at the instant that it just touches the surface by a flash of such excessively short duration that no appreciable change of form can take place while the drop is illuminated.

This gives us a photograph of the earliest stage. The plate must then be removed and a fresh one substituted; a second drop, of exactly the same size, must be let fall from exactly the same place, and photographed in just the same way, but the flash must now be so timed as to take place at a slightly later stage of the splash, say, one-thousandth of a second later. The photographic plate must be then again removed and a third substituted, on which a still later stage is to be depicted, and in this way the phenomenon can be followed step by step.

By adopting this process, and not attempting to follow the same individual splash throughout, we avoid two great difficulties: (1) the necessity of shifting our photographic plate or film through a distance equal to the breadth of the whole picture every five hundredth or thousandth of a second (if we wish to obtain pictures of stages so near together as this); and (2) the difficulty of obtaining brilliant flashes of light of sufficiently short duration at these very short intervals.

For these we substitute two other difficulties: (1) that of delivering the drops exactly as required; and (2) that of timing the flash on each occasion within one or two thousandths of a second, so as to pick out the exact stage we wish to photograph.

I will now describe how these two problems have been solved.

It is easy enough to arrange for the production of small drops of almost exactly equal size. They may be allowed to fall one by one at a steady rate from the end of a fine glass tube connected to a vessel in which the liquid is maintained at a constant level, as in Fig. 1, or they may be squeezed out slowly as required by means of a syringe held in a clip as in Fig. 2. Any required number of these small drops can be caught, and allowed to run together if a larger drop is to be experimented with.

If the liquid used is mercury, the drops may be caught in any little glass cup such as a deeply concave watch-glass; but other liquids, such as water or milk, would wet the glass and stick to it.

If, however, the inside surface of the watch-glass be first carefully smoked in the flame of a candle, then even water or milk will roll over it without sticking, and the drop thus made up will retain a spheroidal form, and can be conveyed to the place of observation in the dark room, where it is transferred to the "dropping cup."

This consists of a similar, deep, smoked watch-glass (W)--see Plate I--supported on the end of a small horizontal lever, a light cylindrical rod of about the dimensions of an ordinary uncut lead pencil, pivoted about a horizontal axle near the end to which the watch-glass is attached. The other end is armed with a small light piece of iron (I) and is held in position by means of an electro-magnet (M), against the action of a spring. On cutting off the current from the electro-magnet the spring, acting as a catapult, tosses up the longer arm of the lever and thus removes the watch-glass from below the drop (D), which is left unsupported in mid-air, so that it falls from a definite fixed distance into a bowl of water placed below it, towards the surface of which the camera (C) is directed. This solves problem number one. Of course, if we wish to observe the splash of a solid sphere, there is no need to smoke the surface of the watch-glass. Indeed, the sphere may be more conveniently supported on a small ring.

Now for the production and timing of the flash. Two large Leyden jars (JJ) are provided, and charged by an electrical machine on their inner coats, one positively and one negatively. Stout wires lead from the outer coats to the dark room, and terminate in a spark-gap (S) between magnesium terminals close over the surface of the water in the bowl just mentioned. If the inner coats are now connected together, the positive and negative charges unite with a dazzling flash and a simultaneous discharge and flash takes place between the two outer coats across the spark-gap in the dark room.

This latter is the illuminating spark; we have now to time it correctly.

For this purpose it is arranged that the discharge shall be effected by means of a falling metal sphere (T) which I shall call the timing sphere, which passes between two terminals S and S connected one to the inside of one jar and one to the inside of the other. These terminals are just too far apart for a spark to leap across, till the timing sphere passes between them and thus shortens the gap; then the discharge takes place, with its accompanying flash in the dark room.

The release of the timing sphere is effected by an arrangement of lever and spring controlled by an electro-magnet exactly similar to that which releases the drop in the dark room, and the two electro-magnets are on the same electric circuit, so that the drop and timing sphere are released simultaneously. But while the drop always falls the same distance, the height through which the timing sphere has to fall before producing discharge can be adjusted at will, and to great nicety, by moving its releasing-lever up or down a vertical support with a scale attached.

If, for example, a particular stage of the splash is photographed when the timing sphere falls just four feet to the gap, then by raising its releasing-lever about two-fifths of an inch, the laws of falling bodies tell us that we shall postpone the flash by just one-thousandth of a second, and the next photograph will accordingly reveal a stage just so much later.

Arrangement of apparatus for photographing splashes.

LABORATORY

E is the electrical machine.

J J are the Leyden jars whose inner coats are connected to the sparking knobs S S.

L is the lever for releasing the timing sphere T.

C is the catapult.

I is the light strip of iron held down by the electro-magnet M.

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