Sacred Texts  Age of Reason  Index 
XVII. Topographical Notes Index
  Previous  Next 
Buy this Book at Amazon.com

The Da Vinci Notebooks at sacred-texts.com

1083.

p. 258

III.

THE COUNTRIES OF THE WESTERN END OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

WHY THE SEA MAKES A STRONGER CURRENT IN THE STRAITS OF SPAIN THAN ELSEWHERE.


Click to enlarge

The straits of Gibraltar (1083-1085).A river of equal depth runs with greater speed in a narrow space than in a wide one, in proportion to the difference between the wider and the narrower one.

This proposition is clearly proved by reason confirmed by experiment. Supposing that through a channel one mile wide there flows one mile in length of water; where the river is five miles wide each of the 5 square miles will require 1/5 of itself to be equal to the square mile of water required in the sea, and where the river is 3 miles wide each of these square miles will require the third of its volume to make up the amount of the square mile of the narrow part; as is demonstrated in f g h at the mile marked n.

 600


Footnotes

258:600 : In the place marked A in the diagram Mare Mediterano (Mediterranean Sea) is written in the original. And at B, stretto di Spugna (straits of Spain, i.e. Gibraltar). Compare No. 960.


Next: 1084.