FATHOM 



3O96 



FATTY ACIDS 



and Gregory the Great. Ante- 

 Nicene Fathers Justin Martyr, 

 Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ter- 

 tullian, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Gregory 

 Thaumaturgus ; Post-Nicene Fa- 

 thers Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusa- 

 lem, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret, 

 Hilary of Poitiers, Hilary of Aries, 

 Leo the Great, John of Damascus, 

 and others. The Venerable Bede 

 is sometimes included in the last 

 category. 



In the Roman Church, the fa- 

 thers, in their testimony to the 

 fundamental doctrines of the faith, 

 are held to be without fault, and 

 their teaching is to be accepted 

 without question ; but in details 

 and method of teaching they are of 

 varying authority and value. 

 Among Protestants no such au- 

 thority is assigned to them ; but 

 the general consensus of the fathers 

 is regarded as of the highest im- 

 portance as showing how the early 

 Church understood the teaching of 

 Christ and His Apostles. The writ- 

 ings of all the chief fathers of the 

 Church are included in Migne's edi- 

 tion, in 387 large volumes, 1844- 

 66 ; and most of them have been 

 translated into English. 



Fathom. Nautical measure 6 ft. 

 in length. Cables, etc., are mea- 

 sured by the fathom, and lead lines 

 are marked off in fathom spaces. 



by 



Fatigue. Condition produced 

 prolonged or excessive muscu- 



lar activity, due partly to consump- 

 tion of the available energy-pro- 

 ducing materials, and partly to the 

 accumulation in the tissues of the 

 waste products formed during these 

 efforts. The physiology of fatigue 

 in a single muscle can be studied 

 graphically with the aid of the 

 muscle-nerve preparation, obtained 

 by dissecting out the gastro- 

 cnemius muscle from the leg of a 

 frog with the nerve attached. In 

 the living being, besides the changes 

 in the muscles, the development 

 of fatigue is increased by the 

 exhaustion of the central nervous 

 system which follows the accu- 

 mulation of waste products in the 

 blood. 



The scientific study of fatigue in 

 workers received a great impetus 

 during the Great War owing to the 

 importance of securing the maxi- 

 mum output from munition fac- 

 tories. Researches show that both 

 the hourly and the absolute output 

 may be materially influenced by 

 fatigue, and that to secure the best 

 results for each form of work there 

 appears to be a definite period of 

 labour. If this period is exceeded 

 the worker never recovers fully 

 from his fatigue, and the total de- 

 cline in the average hourly output 

 may be greater than the increase 

 made by working overtime. Among 



women engaged in moderately 

 heavy work, it was found that a 

 diminution of the hours by 8'5 p.c. 

 actually increased the weekly out- 

 put by 8 p.c. Among men engaged 

 in heavy labour a decrease of hours 

 from 61 '5 to 56 '2 per week eventu- 

 ally increased the hourly output by 

 24 p.c. Similar observations have 

 shown that in the great majority of 

 cases Sunday labour is a mistake, 

 the worker requiring at least one 

 full day's rest a week. 



Other investigations showed that 

 fatigue is less severely felt by 

 workers who are well and properly 

 fed. A group of women, whose 

 early morning period of work was 

 suspended so that they had time 

 to obtain a properly cooked meal, 

 increased their average output in 

 the remaining hours by 12*4 p.c., 

 although the length of the working 

 day was reduced by 20 p.c. The 

 general application of these prin- 

 ciples to industry should be of great 

 benefit, for at present most man- 

 agers of factories have a tendency 

 towards establishing uniformity of 

 hours for all types of labour and 

 for workers of both sexes, and in 

 consequence do not always get the 

 best results. See Factory. 



Fatigue. Term used in metal- 

 lurgy. It was at one time generally 

 assumed that so long as a metal 

 was not stressed beyond its limits of 

 elasticity, it could never give way ; 

 thus one might go on bending a bar 

 of steel or iron backwards and for- 

 wards for ever, and, so long as the 

 bar was not bent so far that it did 

 not recover itself, it would never 

 break. It has been shown, how- 

 ever, that a continued vibratory 

 stress, even well within the limits of 

 elasticity of a metal, will in time 

 " fatigue " it and cause a rearrange- 

 ment of the molecules, a crystallisa- 

 tion in fact, or a change in the origi- 

 nal crystalline structure, which will 

 result in fracture ; or a microscopi- 

 cal flaw may by such stressing be 

 developed into a plane of rupture. 

 Formerly, before the manufacture 

 of steel was so well understood as it 

 is to-day, when the axles of railway 

 carriages were made of malleable 

 iron, breakages occurred and seri- 

 ous accidents resulted owing to the 

 original fibrous structure of the 

 axle having been changed into a 

 crystallisation by repeated vibra- 

 tory stresses. See Steel. 



Fatigue. Duty performed by 

 soldiers in connexion with the ad- 

 ministration of the troops. It in- 

 cludes coal carrying, loading bag- 

 gage, cleansing surface drains and 

 flushing latrines, sweeping yards 

 and removing snow, but not per- 

 sonal service for officers. When 

 employed on whitewashing build- 

 ings or other technical work, which 



properly should be performed by a 

 departmental corps, the troops 

 are called " working parties," and 

 receive " working pay." 



Fatima (c. 606-632). Daughter 

 of Mahomet by his first wife Kadi- 

 jah. Born at Mecca, she was the 

 prophet's favourite daughter, and 

 was called by him one of the four 

 perfect women in the world. She 

 bore her husband AH three sons, 

 Al-Hassan, Al-Hussein, and Al- 

 Muhsin. From the first two are 

 descended the Fatimate caliphs of 

 N. Africa and Syria. 



Another Fatima was the heroine 

 of Perrault's story of Bluebeard, 

 where, as his seventh and last wife, 

 she discovered the bodies of her 

 predecessors. (See Bluebeard.) The 

 name also occurs as that of an en- 

 chantress in the Arabian Nights 

 story of Sindbad the sailor. 



Fatshan. City of China, in the 

 prov. of Kwang-tung. It lies in the 

 Si-Kiang and Pe-Kiang delta, 7 m. 

 S.W. of Canton. It has iron and 

 steel industries, and a trade in 

 cereals, oil, timber, and cassia. At 

 Fatshan Creek, a number of Chinese 

 junks were destroyed by British 

 naval forces during the war of 

 1857. Pop. est. 400,000. 



Fatty Acids. Series of acids 

 with the general formula C n H 2n O 2 , 

 so-called because most of them 

 occur in natural fats. The formula 

 given above requires the number 

 of hydrogen atoms to be double 

 the carbon atoms in each acid. The 

 following is a list of those at present 

 known, arranged in order of their 

 carbon atoms : 



C H a Oa Formic. 



CaH 4 O a Acetic. 



C 3 H 6 Oa Propionic. 



C 4 H 8 Oa Butyric. 



C 5 H, Oa Valeric or pentoic. 



(VH 12 Oa Caproic or hexoic. 



C, H, 4 Oa Oenanthylic or heptoic. 



C 8 H, B Oa Caprylic or octoic. 



C 8 His Oa Pelargonic or nonoic. 



C.oHao Oa Capric or decatoic. 



CuHaa Oa Undecylic or hendecatoic. 



C 12 Ha O 3 Laurie or dodecatoic. 



C 13 H 20 Oa Trldecylic or tridecatoic. 



C^Haa Oa Myristic or tetradecatoic. 



C.sH .-, Oa Pentadecatoic. 



doH. Oa Palmitic or hexadecatoic. 



C, 7 H:>4 Oa Margaric or heptadecatoic. 



C 18 H36 Oa Stearic or octodecatoic. 



C, 8 H3 8 Oa Nondecatoic. 



C^oHio Oa Arachidic or enendecatoic. 



C,iH 42 Oa Medullic. 



CaaH H 4 Oa Behenic or icosoic. 



C 2 4H 4 H Oa Lignoceric. 



Ca.-.H 5 o Oa Hyaenasic. 



O.7H54 O Cerotic. 



CsoHeo Oa Melissic. 



C :M H B Oa Dicetylic. 



CeJInsOa Theobromic. 



The fatty acids may be roughly 

 divided into two classes, liquid and 

 solid. Those containing ten or more 

 atoms of carbon are solids. All dis- 

 solve readily in alcohol and ether. 

 The lower members of the series are 

 soluble in water, but the solubility 

 decreases as the number of carbon 



