Micrographia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 539 pages of information about Micrographia.

Micrographia eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 539 pages of information about Micrographia.
which was therefore the first I set upon, and what I have therein perform’d, I leave the Judicious Reader to determine.  For as that form proceeded from a propiety of fluid bodies, which I have call’d Congruity, or Incongruity; so I think, had I time and opportunity, I could make probable, that all these regular Figures that are so conspicuously various and curious, and do so adorn and beautifie such multitudes of bodies, as I have above hinted, arise onely from three or four several positions or postures of Globular particles, and those the most plain, obvious, and necessary conjunctions of such figur’d particles that are possible, so that supposing such and such plain and obvious causes concurring the coagulating particles must necessarily compose a body of such a determinate regular Figure, and no other, and this with as much necessity and obviousness as a fluid body encompast with a Heterogeneous fluid must be protruded into a Spherule or Globe.  And this I have ad oculum demonstrated with a company of bullets, and some few other very simple bodies; so that there was not any regular Figure, which I have hitherto met withall, of any of those bodies that I have above named, that I could not with the composition of bullets or globules, and one or two other bodies, imitate, even almost by shaking them together.  And thus for instance may we find that the Globular bullets will of themselves, if put on an inclining plain, so that they may run together, naturally run into a triangular order, composing all the variety of figures that can be imagin’d to be made out of aequilateral triangles; and such will you find, upon trial, all the Surfaces of Alum to be compos’d of:  For three bullets lying on a plain, as close to one another as they can compose an aequilatero-triangular form, as in A in the 7. Scheme.  If a fourth be joyn’d to them on either side as closely as it can, they four compose the most regular Rhombus consisting of two aequilateral triangles, as B. If a fifth be joyn’d to them on either side in as close a position as it can, which is the propriety of the Texture, it makes a Trapezium, or four-sided Figure, two of whole angles are 120. and two 60. degrees, as C. If a sixth be added, as before, either it makes an aequilateral triangle, as D, or a Rhomboeid, as E, or an Hex-angular Figure, as F, which is compos’d of two primary Rhombes.  If a seventh be added, it makes either an aequilatero-hexagonal Figure, as G, or some kind of six-sided Figure, as H, or I. And though there be never so many placed together, they may be rang’d into some of these lately mentioned Figures, all the angles of which will be either 60. degrees, or 120. as the figure K. which is an aequiangular hexagonal Figure is compounded of 12. Globules, or may be of 25, or 27, or 36, or 42, &c. and by these kinds of
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Micrographia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.