FALLING, or weight of bodies ; an important phenomenon, which used to be ascribed to gravitation, a translation of the word weights; so that, according to this wordy philosophy, weight was ow ing to weight. But it is now con sidered as well proved, that all central force in planets is a necessary result of the simultaneous orbit, orprogressions, and the rotary motions, and that the di rection to the centre is the constant dia gonal of those motions, and the increase in the diagonal the exact quantity fallen in a given time. The rotation is a de flection from the line of the orbit motion, and this being much greater, the body deflected by the rotation is carried by the greater motion obliquely to the com mon centre of both motions. This is ob vious in the equatorial plane, but, in lat itudes, the diagonal is compounded of the orbit motions as one force, and of the sine and co-sine as to the rotatory or de flective force ; and the square of the sine and co-sine being equal to the square of the radius, every where alike, the fall in direction and quantity agrees with that at , the equator. The orbit velocity in a se
cond is 98,132 feet, the equatorial circle is 1525 feet nearly, or in the perpendicu lar 970.85 feet, that 101.1 to 1, and this inversely, as 6.28318 the circle to the ra dius 1, the resulting force in the radius is feet as the mean fall. Or taking the two motions as 98132 to 1525, and inversely as 4, the square of the di ameter to 1, we also get 16-08725. The squaring the and extracting the root of their sum, gives an analagous re suit, but, for popular explanation, the preceding may suffice.