Measurement of Speed of Rotation.

To measure the speed of rotation, a tuning-fork, bearing on one prong a steel mirror, was used. This was kept in vibration by a current of electricity from five "gravity" cells. The fork was so placed that the light from the revolving mirror was reflected to a piece of plane glass, in front of the lens of the eye-piece of the micrometer, inclined at an angle of 45°, and thence to the eye. When fork and revolving mirror are both at rest, an image of the revolving mirror is seen. When the fork vibrates, this image is drawn out into a band of light.

When the mirror commences to revolve, this band breaks up into a number of moving images of the mirror; and when, finally, the mirror makes as many turns as the fork makes vibrations, these images are reduced to one, which is stationary. This is also the case when the number of turns is a submultiple. When it is a multiple or simple ratio, the only difference is that there are more images. Hence, to make the mirror execute a certain number of turns, it is simply necessary to pull the cord attached to the valve to the right or left till the images of the revolving mirror come to rest.

The electric fork made about 128 vibrations per second. No dependence was placed upon this rate, however, but at each set of observations it is compared with a standard Ut3 fork, the temperature being noted at the same time. In making the comparison the sound-beats produced by the forks were counted for 60 seconds. It is interesting to note that the electric fork, as long as it remained untouched and at the same temperature, did not change its rate more than one or two hundredths vibrations per second.

fig 9