112 



EXPERIMENTS IN AERODYNAMICS. 



SUMMARY. 



The time of falling the total 4 feet increases from 0.55 second, when the plane is at 

 rest, to 2.15 seconds, when the plane has a horizontal velocity of 26 meters per second. 

 Examining the time of falling the several succe.ssive feet, it will be seen that there is no 

 uniformity in tlie relative times in which the several distances were passed over. Only the 

 first experiment at G meters per second shows a velocity of fall continually increasing at a 

 diminishing rate as the circumstances require. The remaining four experiments, for which 

 a complete record was obtained, show decreasing velocities of fall in a part or all of the 

 distance after the first foot. These anomalous and discordant results are in all probabilitj' 

 due to wind currents having a vertical component, which vitiated the observations. Thus 

 the completeness of the apparatus and the perfection of the details of operations, whereby 

 an accuracy of ^-J-jy of a second was secured, were all rendered futile by the uncontrolled 

 conditions under which the experiment was unavuidablj^ conducted, and no decisive result 

 was added to those already summarized. 



