Popular Science Monthly/Volume 6/April 1875/Rain-Drops on the Sea
| RAIN-DROPS ON THE SEA. |
By Prof. OSBORNE REYNOLDS, M. A.
THERE appears to be a very general belief among sailors that rain tends to calm the sea, or, as I have often heard it expressed, that rain soon knocks down the sea. Without attaching very much weight to this general impression, my object in this paper is to point out an effect of rain on falling into water which I believe has not been hitherto noticed, and which would certainly tend to destroy any wave-motion there might be in the water. When a drop of rain falls on to water the splash or rebound is visible enough, as are also the waves which diverge from the point of contact; but the effect caused by the drop under the surface is not apparent, because, the water being all of the same color, there is nothing to show the interchange of place which may be going on. There is, however, a very considerable effect produced. If instead of a drop of rain we let fall a drop of colored water, or, better still, if we color the topmost layer of the water, this effect becomes apparent. We then see that each drop sends down one or more masses of colored water in the form of vortex rings. These rings descend with a gradually diminishing velocity and with increasing size to a distance of several inches, generally as much as eighteen, below the surface. Each drop sends in general more than one ring, but the first ring is much more definite, and descends much quicker than those which follow it. If the surface of the water be not colored, this first ring is hardly apparent, for it appears to contain
Drops descending below the Surface.
very little of the water of the drop which causes it. The actual size of these rings depends on the size and speed of the drops. They steadily increase as they descend, and before they stop they have generally attained a diameter of from one to two inches, or even more. The diagram above shows the effect which may be produced in a glass vessel. It is not that the drop merely forces itself down under the surface, but, in descending, carries down with it a mass of water which, when the ring is one inch in diameter, would be an oblate spheroid, having a larger axis of two inches and a lesser of about one and a half inch. For it is well known that the vortex ring is merely the core of the mass of fluid which accompanies it, the shape of which is much the same as that which would be formed by winding string through and through a curtain-ring until it was full. It is probable that the momentum of these rings corresponds very nearly with that of the drops before impact, so that when rain is falling on to water there is as much motion immediately beneath the surface as above it, only the drops, so to speak, are much larger, and their motion is slower. Besides the splash, therefore, and surface-effect which the drops produce, they cause the water at the surface rapidly to change places with that at some distance below. Such a transposition of water from one place to another must tend to destroy wave-motion. This may be seen as follows: Imagine a layer of water adjacent to the surface, and a few inches thick, to be flowing in any direction over the lower water, which is to be supposed at rest. The effect of a drop would be to knock some of the moving water into that which is at rest, and a corresponding quantity of water would have to rise up into the moving layer, so that the upper layer would lose its motion by communicating it to the water below. Now, when the surface of water is disturbed by waves, besides the vertical motion the particles move backward and forward in an horizontal direction, and this motion diminishes as we proceed downward from the surface. Therefore, in this case, the effect of rain-drops will be the same as in the case considered above, namely, to convey the motion which belongs to the water at the surface down into the lower water, where it has no effect so far as the waves are concerned, and hence the rain would diminish the motion at the surface, which is essential to the continuance of the waves, and thus destroy the waves.—Nature.
