3 ON THE EFFECT OF THE INTERNAL FRICTION OF FLUIDS
.xifluence the motion of the fluids, it is necessary that the envelopes should be similar and similarly situated with respect to the solids oscillating within them, and that their linear dimensions should be in the same ratio as those of the oscillating bodies. In strictness, it is likewise necessary that the solids should he similarly situated with respect to the axis of rotation. If however two similar solids, such as two spheres, are attached to two fine wires, and made to perform small oscillations in two unlimited masses of fluid, and if we agree to neglect the effect of the suspending wires, and likewise the effect of the rotation of the spheres on the motion of the fluid, which last will in truth be exceedingly small, we may regard the two systems as geometrically similar, and they will be dynamically similar provided the condition (6) be satisfied. When the two fluids are of the same nature, as for example when both spheres oscillate in air, the condition of dynamical similarity reduces itself to this, that the times of oscillation shall be as the squares of the diameters of the spheres.
If, with Bessel, we represent the effect of the inertia of the fluid on the time of oscillation of the sphere by supposing a mass equal to Jc times that of the fluid displaced added to the mass of the sphere, which increases its inertia without increasing its weight, we must expect to find Jc dependent on the nature of the fluid, and likewise on the diameter of the sphere. Bessel, in fact, obtained very different values of Jc for water and for air. Baily's experiments on spheres of different diameters, oscillating once in a second nearly, shew that the value of k increases when the diameter of the sphere decreases. Taking this for the present as the result of experiment, we are led from theory to assert that the value of k increases with the time of oscillation; in fact, Jc ought to be as much increased as if we had left the time of oscillation unchanged, and diminished the diameter in the ratio in which the square root of the time is increased. It may readily be shewn that the value of k obtained by Bessel's method, Joy means of a long and short pendulum, is greater than what belongs to the long pendulum, much more, greater than what belongs to the shorter pendulum, which oscillated once in a second nearly. The value of k given by Bessel is in fact considerably larger than that obtained by Baily, by a direct method, from a sphere of nearly