Abstract
I FIND that Dr. Carpenter does not consider his experimen probative. Judging from the air of triumph with which, both in his lectures and writings, he has announced its success, I had certainly imagined that he did. But if not probative, what is it? Dr. Carpenter says it is only intended to be illustrative. What does it illustrate? It does not illustrate any currents formed in the ocean by differences of temperature; for it does not illustrate the differences of temperature to which he attributes these currents. In his letter in NATURE of July 6, he proposes an unwieldy modification of his former well-known experiment, but which still, I would submit, in no way avoids the difficulty to which I have called attention. He describes a strong freezing mixture applied to the surface through one-tenth of the length of a trough half a mile long, and heat applied to the surface also through one-tenth of the length, measured from the other end: between the cold and the hot surface there is, then, an intervening space of four-tenths of a mile, or 2,112 feet; that is to say, there is a thermometric gradient of about 50° in 2,000 feet, or 1° in forty feet. This is small enough, and we may perhaps doubt whether such a gradient could give rise to any appreciable movement; but it is 15,000 times greater than the gradient observed in the ocean, which is about 1° in 100 nautical miles; and any movement shown by an experiment which, in its details, bears no reasonable proportion to the reality, cannot be accepted as an illustration of a movement in the ocean.
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LAUGHTON, J. Ocean Currents. Nature 4, 223 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004223b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004223b0
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