CONCLUSION
We have now reached the end of the story, as far at least as I am able
to tell it. But there is certainly more to be found out. No one has yet
examined what happens when a rough sphere enters a liquid with a very
high velocity. That the motion set up must differ from that at a low
velocity is apparent to any one who has thrown stones from a low bridge
into deep water below. The stone that is thrown with a great velocity
makes neither quite the same sound nor the same kind of splash as a
slow-falling stone, and though in the light of our present knowledge we
may conjecture the kind of difference to be expected, yet experience has
taught me that the subject is so full of unexpected turns that it is
better to wait for the photographic record than to speculate without it.
It would be an immense convenience, as was suggested in the first
chapter, if we could use a kinematograph and watch such a splash in
broad daylight, without the troublesome necessity of providing darkness
and an electric spark. But the difficulties of contriving an exposure of
the whole lens short enough to prevent blurring, either from the motion
of the object, or from that of the rapidly-shifting sensitive film, are
very great, and any one who may be able to overcome them satisfactorily,
will find a multitude of applications awaiting his invention.
But even were the photographic record complete, what does it amount to?
All that we have done has been merely to follow the rapid changes of
form that take place in the bounding surface of the liquid. The interior
particles of the liquid itself have remained invisible to us. But it is
precisely the motion of these particles that the student of
hydrodynamics desires to be able to trace. His study is so difficult
that even in the apparently simple case of the gently-undulating surface
of deep water, the reasoning necessary to discover the real path of any
particle can at present only be followed by the highly-trained
mathematician. In other and more complicated cases such as are
exemplified by the sudden disturbances that we have studied, any
definite information that can be obtained, even as to the motion of the
surface, may afford a clue to the solution of important questions; and I
have been encouraged to hope that the observations here recorded may
serve as a useful basis of experimental fact in a confessedly difficult
subject.
To take a single illustration of a possible application in an unexpected
quarter, I would invite the attention of the reader to the two
photographs in the frontispiece, which exhibit the splash of a
projectile on striking the steel armour-plate of a battleship. These are
ordinary photographs taken after the plate had been used as a target.
They represent the side on which the projectile has entered. In one
picture the projectile is still seen embedded in the plate.
No one looking at these photographs can fail to be struck with the close
resemblance to some of the splashes that we have studied. There is the
same _slight_ upheaval of the neighbouring surface, the same crater,
with the same curled lip, leading to the inference that under the
immense and suddenly applied pressure, the steel has behaved like a
liquid.
Such flow of metals under great pressure is familiar enough to
mechanical engineers, but what I desire to suggest is, that from a study
of the motions set up in a liquid in an analogous case, it may be
possible to deduce information about the distribution of internal
stress, which may apply also to a solid, and may thus lead to
improvements in the construction of a plate that is intended to resist
penetration.