A II TICLE IX 



On some of the Results of a Series of Experiments relative to different parts of Gunnery. 

 Bij Captain Robert F. Stockton, of the United States Navy. Communicated by Profes- 

 sor Henri/. Read June 19///, 1846. 



The experiments of which the present communication is intended to give an account 

 of some of the results, were instituted by permission of the Navy Department, and were 

 supplementary to those previously ordered, by the same authority, to be made with the 

 large guns of the steamer Princeton. 



The results now presented to the society relate to the three following questions, ^ iz. 



1. Is a gun more liable to burst with a space left between the powder and shot, than 

 when the latter is rammed home? 



2. What is the effect, in reference to the tendency of bursting, of increasing the num- 

 ber of shot to be fired from the gun at the same discharge? 



3. What part of the gun is exposed to the greatest internal pressure from the explosion 

 of the powder? 



I. It has been stated by the highest authorities on gunnery, and it seems to be gene- 

 rally admitted, that a space left between the powder and the ball greatly increases the 

 danger of bursting. 



"If," says Mr. Babbagc, in his interesting work on the economy of manufactures, - in 

 loading a gun a space be left between the wadding and the charge, the gun either recoils 

 violently or hursts." This opinion appears to have been first advanced by Robins, and 

 was based on some incidental observations made in the course of his experiments on 

 gunnery. Various hypotheses have been proposed for its explanation. Mr. Babbage 

 refers it to the difference of time in the passage of a wave 1 , or the effect of an impulse, 

 through air and through metal. Poisson, we believe, adopts the same explanation, while 

 Robins attributes the effect to the momentum which the generated gas acquires before 

 it reaches the hall. If the first explanation he true, it is difficult to sec whj a gun should 

 nol burst as readil) without a ball as with one; .and, in the second explanation, we are at 

 n loss to conceive how a sufficient momentum can lie general d in a gas moving in a 



