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The principia; or, the first principles of natural things, being new attempts toward a philosophical explanation of the elementary world / By Emanuel Swedenborg ... Translated from the Latin by the Rev. Augustus Clissold.

  • Emmanuel Swedenborg
Date:
1845-1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principia; or, the first principles of natural things, being new attempts toward a philosophical explanation of the elementary world / By Emanuel Swedenborg ... Translated from the Latin by the Rev. Augustus Clissold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    EXPERIMENT LXXIV. The magnet, when armed in the manner we have described, attracts and sustains iron of much greater weight when applied to its feet, than when unarmed it raises at each pole. For I have a magnet which unarmed sustains from each pole about 5 ounces of iron, and therefore would sustain from both together only 10 ounces ; while the same magnet when armed raises 7 pounds of iron. As a confirmation of my observations by the testimony of others, I may remark that Mersennus mentions that he saw a magnet weighing 3 pounds, which unarmed raised only half an ounce [unciatn semissem], but when armed carried 10 pounds. De Lany, in Magist. Nat. and Artis, vol. hi., book 23, chap, i., sect. 15, says, that he had a magnet, which when armed would lift about 864 grains, but when unarmed only 54 grains ; and he mentions that there was a magnet at Rome which when unarmed lifted scarcely a drachm, but when armed lifted 5 ounces. From these observations it is evident, that a greater weight was carried by the armature than by the naked magnet; but inasmuch as we can scarcely think that these magnets were armed in one and the same manner, and with the greatest caution, so it cannot be pronounced that the forces acquired in lifting the iron w^ere either in the same, or in a different proportion. EXPERIMENT LXXV. If a magnet be able to keep suspended from one of its poles a given number of iron rings freely hanging from it, but if one of them be so suspended as to touch simultaneously both poles of the magnet, then this one only can be sustained by the magnet and all the others which are applied to it fall. At first sight we might have thought that the united force would be stronger ; for since one pole raises several rings, it might be inferred that two poles would raise more ; especially since a much greater weight of iron can be suspended from both poles than from one. But we find the contrary to be the case. The reason therefore of this incapacity will depend on the annular figure of the iron itself, which causes the force issuing from one pole of the magnet to destroy that which pro¬ ceeds from the other, after they have met each other in a contrary direction, so that no more can be carried by the first ring.
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