The Effect of Oil in Stilling Waves
It was thought that this old idea had been completely disproved by experiment; but, according to the Saturday Review, the very contrary has been the result of recent experiments, in course of which, at all events, waves on a pond, generated by the wind, were completely stilled to a “glassy smoothness” by means of a film of oil scarcely more than the 7,000,000th part of an inch in thickness, and exhibiting the most brilliant zones of iridescent colours from its extreme thinness. The modus operandi is believed to consist simply in the wind ceasing to have a hold upon the water by the intervention of the oil, which slips along the surface with the wind, so that the oil must be applied to windward, and it moves to leeward, smoothing the surface as it goes!