SHIPS HEAVIER GOING WEST.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 December 1923, Page 3

SHIPS HEAVIER GOING WEST.

LONDON. Oet. to. Experiments to discover toe origin of mountains have heen made during the past two months by i’rotessur V. • (!. Duflield, who occupies the C hair oi Physics at Heading University, but the results cannot yet be made known. The experiments, however, have yielded intorniation of practical use, said the professor to a reporter yesterday, for instance, he said smiling, if you are ever challenged to run a mile keep running east. You will bo lighter. On a 2,oi>:>-ton destroyer .1 touud «c ship 4cwt. lighter travelling east Than when going west. 'I his is be- ✓ cause anything travelling east is traveiling iii the same direction as the earth is revolving, and the eentrituga. force is therfore greater than wlmn it. is travelling west. Therefore a .TIt.OOO-tons Atlantic lines would weigh approximately ■> tonsjlfcss on its journey to England ' tlia.Fwhen travelling to America. Kegarcling the main object ot his ex-periments-—which were made in the refrigerating chamber of the ' Molt liner Neston—the professor said n was to find whether the mountains were built by* natural changes from the material derived from adjacent valleys, on the excavation principle, or whether they grew in the sense that they were forced upwards because they were less dense than their sur- _> roundings. , In other words. are mountains floating on the earth in'the same way as icebergs float on the sea because they are less dense than their surroundings. just as the water which makes up an iceberg is less dense than the seawater on which it floats' ;\Vith delicate instruments of Ins own design Professor Duflield has heen taking almost continuous readings to determine the force of gravity at sea. and until the kinematograph him on which the readings arc registered has

been examined lie does not know the result of his quest. lie thinks the "conn •usatiuii" or “isostatic" theory (the iceberg principle) was probable correct. According to the excavation theory as to the origin ot the mountains (be said), one would expect to find a larger force of gravity at the top ot a mountain than at the bottom of a vallev because there would he a greatet amount of material between the surface and the eartVs centre, which would have a greater “pull. The “isostatic” theory was that there was no more material bet«ten the too of a mountain and the earth s centre than between the bottom ot a valley and the earth's centre. Mis experiments, therefore, were to determine gravity along an ocean route. On land there were dillmuLiej„ the way of determining gravity ami correcting the observations to “ ,l level, but at sea it was unnecessary to reduce the observations to sea-level.