WEIGHT OF WATER = TIME
3rd day SALVIATI protagonist in TWO NEW SCIENCES, claims to have assisted Galileo in his experiments, describes them to SAGREDO and SIMPLICIO:
"We rolled the ball along the channel, noting, in a manner presently to be described, the time required to make the descent. We repeated this experiment more than once in order to measure the time with an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one-tenth of a pulse-beat. Having performed this operation and having assured ourselves of its reliability, we now rolled the ball only one-quarter the length of the channel; and having measured the time of its descent, we found it precisely to be one-half of the former. Next we tried other distances, comparing the time for the whole length with that for the half, or with that of two thirds, or three-fourths, or indeed for any fraction; in such experiments, repeated a full hundred times, we always found that the spaces traversed were to each other as the squares of the times, and this was true for all inclinations of the plane, along which we rolled the ball.
For the measurement of time we employed a large vessel of water placed in an elevated position; to the bottom of this vessel was soldered a pipe of small diameter giving a thin jet of water, which we collected in a small glass during the time of each descent, whether for the whole length of the channel or for a part of its length, the water thus collected was weighed, after each descent, on a very accurate balance (against grains of sand); the differences and ratios of these weights gave us the differences and ratios of the times, and this with such accuracy that although the operation was repeated many, many times, there was no appreciable discrepancy in the results."
MARBLE ARCH ViDeos
* in september 2001 i walked from Venezia to Roma on foot
* in case i should lose my marbles in the process, i decided i might as well take some (marbles) with me: to lose, you see
* i also planned to organise some "performances" on the way, linked to the above text and experiments, but never got round to really think about them
* the vague idea was to show the link between science and art: the repetition of empirical events that lead to form, or something along that way
HERE ARE MY ROLLING THE BALL PERFORMANCES
1- i have not drawn any conclusions yet
2- they are a thread
a canvas
I HOPE THERE WILL NOT BE TOO MUCH APPRECIABLE DISCREPANCY IN THE RESULTS