Helmholtz found that a vortex whirl, once established in a frictionless medium, must go on, theoretically, unchanged forever.
Only the frictionlessmedium was lacking to fulfil all the conditions of Helmholtz's indestructible vortices.
And at once Lord Kelvin bethought him of the frictionless medium which physicists had now begun to accept--the all-pervading ether.
They got the word immediately, but to the old man's dismay, Travis's mare shot away like a scared doe, trotting as frictionless as a glazed emery wheel.
Altogether the testimony seems conclusive that the ether is a frictionless medium, and does not transform mechanical motion into heat.
It is true that in a frictionless medium like the ether one cannot at present see how such vortex-rings could be produced in it.
This mode of frictionlesslinking is rigid and allows at the same time perfectly free movement of the levers.
The most serious difficulty was in connection with frictionless support of the axes of the two levers.
We should have what we want if this rope were a chain of gyrostats such as you see figured in the diagram; gyrostats all spinning in the same way looked at from below, with frictionless hinges between them.
Many men wonder how the ether can have the enormous rigidity necessary for light transmission, and yet behave like a frictionless fluid.
Now it is not easy to obtain so frictionless a gyrostat that it will maintain a good spin for such a length of time as will enable the rotation of the room to be made visible to an audience.
It is characteristic of a state of frictionless mechanical equilibrium that an indefinitely small difference of pressure suffices to upset the equilibrium and reverse the motion.
Suppose that we have a cylinder fitted with a frictionless piston, containing 1 gram of water at 100 deg.
That the molecules of those substances, being frictionless bodies in a frictionless medium, and their motion not being dissipated by conduction or radiation, continue incessantly in motion until some cause arises to prevent them.
Of course with a frictionless and non-atomic Aether such a result would be an impossibility, but with our conception of an atomic and gravitative Aether the result is now attainable.
If the Aether really possesses inertia, then it must possess mass, and possessing mass it ceases to be a frictionless medium.
We will therefore consider the problem of the existence of a frictionless medium from the philosophical standpoint.
But with a frictionless medium, it is an absolute impossibility to conceive of different degrees of density of the Aether in association with matter.
Of course such a result is altogether opposed to the ordinary conception of a frictionless medium, and indeed to any conception of the Aether except to that submitted in this work, which is also in harmony with Young's Fourth Hypothesis (Art.
At the present time, with the conception of a frictionless Aether, it is impossible to harmonize the existence of such a force or motion with our theory of the Aether.
For with the present conception of a frictionless Aether, such a hypothesis is altogether untenable, because it supposes something that is contrary to all experience and observation.
Interesting, too, were the cascades over blue cliffs, where streams fell into crevasses or slid almost noiselessly down slopes so smooth and frictionless their motion was concealed.
If the system be subject to frictionless constraints, e.
Just so with the conception of a frictionless fluid.
The most conspicuous property of the ether is its enormous elasticity, a property which we should not find in a frictionless fluid.
Of course the ether which conveys thermal and luminous undulations is not the frictionless fluid postulated by Sir William Thomson.
Thus the startling question is suggested, Why may not the ultimate atoms of matter be vortex-rings forever existing in such a frictionless fluid filling the whole of space?
Know, that as your body is now absolutely without weight, and is suspended in a frictionless medium, the most delicate balance of a chemist can not approach in sensitiveness the adjustment herein exemplified.
We are absolutely without weight, and in a perfectly frictionless medium.
Let the air be imagined confined in a cylinder closed by a frictionless piston, which is kept from moving out under the air pressure by force applied from without.
