The application of these results to actual jets presents no great difficulty. The disturbances by which equilibrium is upset are impressed upon the fluid as it leaves the aperture, and the continuous portion of the jet represents the distance travelled during the time necessary to produce disintegration. Thus the length of the continuous portion necessarily depends upon the character of the disturbances in respect of amplitude and wave-length. It may be increased considerably, as F. Savart showed, by a suitable isolation of the reservoir from tremors, whether due to external sources or to the impact of the jet itself in the vessel placed to receive it. Nevertheless it does not appear to be possible to carry the prolongation very far. Whether the residuary disturbances are of external origin, or are due to friction, or to some peculiarity of the fluid motion within the reservoir, has not been satisfactorily determined. On this point Plateau’s explanations are not very clear, and he sometimes expresses himself as if the time of disintegration depended only upon the capillary tension, without reference to initial disturbances at all.
Two laws were formulated by Savart with respect to the length of the continuous portion of a jet, and have been to a certain extent explained by Plateau. For a given fluid and a given orifice the length is approximately proportional to the square root of the head. This follows at once from theory, if it can be assumed that the disturbances remain always of the same character, so that the time of disintegration is constant. When the head is given, Savart found the length to be proportional to the diameter of the orifice. From (3) it appears that the time in which a disturbance is multiplied in a given ratio varies, not as d, but as d3/2. Again, when the fluid is changed, the time varies as ρ1/2T −1/2. But it may be doubted whether the length of the continuous portion obeys any very simple laws, even when external disturbances are avoided as far as possible.
When the circumstances of the experiment are such that the reservoir is influenced by the shocks due to the impact of the jet, the disintegration usually establishes itself with complete regularity, and is attended by a musical note (Savart). The impact of the regular series of drops which is at any moment striking the sink (or vessel receiving the water), determines the rupture into similar drops of the portion of the jet at the same moment passing the orifice. The pitch of the note, though not absolutely definite, cannot differ much from that which corresponds to the division of the jet into wave-lengths of maximum instability; and, in fact, Savart found that the frequency was directly as the square root of the head, inversely as the diameter of the orifice, and independent of the nature of the fluid—laws which follow immediately from Plateau’s theory.
From the pitch of the note due to a jet of given diameter, and issuing under a given head, the wave-length of the nascent divisions can be at once deduced. Reasoning from some observations of Savart, Plateau finds in this way 4.38 as the ratio of the length of a division to the diameter of the jet. The diameter of the orifice was 3 millims., from which that of the jet is deduced by the introduction of the coefficient .8. Now that the length of a division has been estimated a priori, it is perhaps preferable to reverse Plateau’s calculation, and to exhibit the frequency of vibration in terms of the other data of the problem. Thus
| frequency = | √(2gh) | . (4) |
| 4.508d |
But the most certain method of obtaining complete regularity of resolution is to bring the reservoir under the influence of an external vibrator, whose pitch is approximately the same as that proper to the jet. H.G. Magnus (Pogg. Ann. cvi., 1859) employed a Neef’s hammer, attached to the wooden frame which supported the reservoir. Perhaps an electrically maintained tuning-fork is still better. Magnus showed that the most important part of the effect is due to the forced vibration of that side of the vessel which contains the orifice, and that but little of it is propagated through the air. With respect to the limits of pitch, Savart found that the note might be a fifth above, and more than an octave below, that proper to the jet. According to theory, there would be no well-defined lower limit; on the other side, the external vibration cannot be efficient if it tends to produce divisions whose length is less than the circumference of the jet. This would give for the interval defining the upper limit π : 4.508, which is very nearly a fifth. In the case of Plateau’s numbers (π : 4.38) the discrepancy is a little greater.
The detached masses into which a jet is resolved do not at once assume and retain a spherical form, but execute a series of vibrations, being alternately compressed and elongated in the direction of the axis of symmetry. When the resolution is effected in a perfectly periodic manner, each drop is in the same phase of its vibration as it passes through a given point of space; and thence arises the remarkable appearance of alternate swellings and contractions described by Savart. The interval from one swelling to the next is the space described by the drop during one complete vibration, and is therefore (as Plateau shows) proportional ceteris paribus to the square root of the head.
The time of vibration is of course itself a function of the nature of the fluid and of the size of the drop. By the method of dimensions alone it may be seen that the time of infinitely small vibrations varies directly as the square root of the mass of the sphere and inversely as the square root of the capillary tension; and it may be proved that its expression is
| r = √ ( | 3πρV | ), (5) |
| 8T |
V being the volume of the vibrating mass.