﻿418 K. H. Shellbach on Acoustic Repulsion and Attraction. 



repeat the experiments (which I indicate in my work on the 

 movements of air and the pressure of moving air), and will find 

 them correct. 



For the present I content myself with having proved experi- 

 mentally that a body vibrating in an elastic medium reacts upon 

 the medium in such a manner as to diminish its pressure at the 

 place of contact and at a distance, the consequence of which is 

 that bodies suspended in the medium and within the sphere of 

 activity of the vibrating body are brought to the surface of the 

 latter by exterior pressure, which overcomes the intermediate 

 pressure between the attracting and attracted body. 



That which occurs with vibrating bodies plunged in air ought 

 to, and really does, occur in the case of atoms of coercible and 

 ponderable matter plunged in sether, because no other explana- 

 tion is possible of the phenomena of the formation of solid, 

 liquid, and gaseous bodies, and of their transformation one into 

 the other, of their elasticity, dilatability, solubility (affinities of 

 the tension of media and of heavenly bodies), of the weight of 

 bodies, of gravitation — in one word, of universal attraction, — and 

 because this explanation is in accordance with those phenomena 

 which we can see and measure. 



Part II. — Acoustic Repulsion and Attraction. 

 By K. H. Schellbach*. — No. 1. 



If the action exerted upon one another by atoms at exceed- 

 ingly small distances be admitted as comprehensible, we must 

 be prepared to admit the extension of the attractive or repulsive 

 force to masses at very great distances from one another. 

 The distant action of magnetism and electricity would then re- 

 quire no special explanation, and is not necessarily a consequence 

 of the interposition of a connecting medium. Nevertheless it 

 is possible that phenomena of attraction or repulsion at consi- 

 derable distances might be occasioned by oscillations of sether 

 or air. 



Certain experiments which I performed last summer and first 

 communicated to Herr Professor Quincke appear to support 

 this supposition. I brought the flame of a stearine candle 

 almost into contact with a tuning-fork fastened horizontally. As 

 soon as the fork was set in vibration, the flame was quite di- 

 stinctly repelled as long as the fork vibrated. When the flame 

 was placed beneath the fork, it was depressed and flattened out 

 into a disk. Resonance-disks and organ-pipes in a vertical posi- 

 tion exhibited similar phenomena. A candle-flame at the mouth 

 of a sounding-box provided with a tuning-fork which made 512 

 single vibrations per second, was strongly and continuously re- 

 * " Akustische Abstossung und Anziehung, von K. H. Schellbach," 

 Pogg. Ann. vol. cxxxix. St. 4, p. 670. 



