| Description | When they met at Mrs. Brown's, Larmor had told her of a difficulty with a paper by Lord Kelvin on the passage of water past the piers of bridges. Kelvin thought that turbulence arose immediately in the lee of the pier, but Rayleigh and Stokes had argued that the water was smooth for a short distance. Ayrton thought it should be easy to resolve this by experiment. She has conducted the experiment and thinks that Kelvin is wrong. She describes the experiment, using water with aluminium in a glass channel, equipment that she employed long ago. She describes some refinements and the pier wedge she inserted, giving a sketch of the experimental set-up. She would be glad to show the experiment if Larmor would care to see it. The results are definite for running and oscillating water and she always starts with the water at rest, so that no alien vortices intrude. |