Chapter 1 | The Earth |
3. The third point of a body is it's real center - which, however, is never to be confused with the center of gravity of a body; and therefore every body has two centers, namely one of gravity and one of it's physical measure. You may also examine bodies of whatever kind, and you will never find that the center of gravity and the center of the body measure coincide completely in one; not even with a perfectly mathematically correct cast metal sphere, and that because absolutely nobody consists of such perfectly equal parts, according to which the center of gravity could coincide with the actual center of the body measure in completely one. 4. If, for example, you take pure steel as one of the most solid metal bodies of all metals, break such a steel bar in two, you will easily recognize the crystalline structure at the white fracture, which will appear to the unaided eye to be strikingly uniform; but observed with a microscope, this fracture surface will get an appearance like the sight of one discovering all kinds of larger and smaller elevations from a high mountain below. But if such a difference can be perceived in the crystalline structure of one of the most solid metal bodies, how much greater is such a difference with those far less solid bodies, whose crystalline structure is often easily perceptible to the naked eye between large and small, dense and less dense; and it is therefore all the more perfectly true that the center of gravity and the center of the body-measure can never coincide. 5. This principle could also be seen very easily by everyone in the preparation of a carriage. Someone should construct a perfectly mathematically even wagon beam from metal of as much the same density as possible, then hang it in the wagon fork, and he will see for himself that even with such a highly mathematically correct evenness, the two wagon beams, or rather the two parts of the same wagon beam, will never form a perfectly horizontal plane, but one will suggest something to the other, and the manufacturer of the scale will then have to come to the aid of the scale beam either on one side or on the other with a file or with a hammer. The cause of this, of course, lies in the above principle. |
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