Abstract
III. §11. THE accompanying diagram (Fig. 1) illustrates the application of the doctrine in question, to a disk kept moving through water or air with a constant velocity, V, perpendicular to its own plane. The assumption to which I object as being inconsistent with hydrodynamics, and very far from any approximation to the truth for an inviscid incompressible fluid in any circumstances, and utterly at variance with observation of disks or blades (as oar blades) caused to move through water; is, that starting from the edge as represented by the two continuous curves in the diagram, and extending indefinitely rearwards, there is a “surface of discontinuity” on the outside of which the water flows, relatively to the disk, with velocity V, and on the inside there is a rear-less mass of “dead water”2 following close after the disk.
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On the Doctrine of Discontinuity of Fluid Motion, in Connection with the Resistance against a Solid Moving through a Fluid1. Nature 50, 573–575 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/050573a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/050573a0