A POSER AND A MYTH

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11949, 20 May 1933, Page 9

A POSER AND A MYTH

JACK TAR’S PET SUPERSTITION

There has been much comment over the unexpectedness of seme of tho problems set in th© education tests for the Navy. One of the questions singled out for censure is this: “Will iron float at a great depth in waterf” It has clearly escaped the know-. Ledge of 'tlie critics that a very .ancient superstition among sailors, aim probably among landsmen too, prompt-g the .setting of this poser, for .when we- say that So-and-so “will, find his level” w© are merely adopting as a metaphor the okl belief of sailors .that iron does not float at certain depths. Til© belief is that under great pressure water becomes' so dons© and thick that solid matter will not descend through it; that a drowned man, a sunken batik-shim a rent liner, sink only a aerlain distance, find their level, and then float, suspended in-' water 100 dens© for iaether descent-,

MILES DEEP IN THE SEA. Generation after generation of »eambii has inherited the- legend of sunken objects “finding their level just as generation after generation of rustics lia s inherited the legend that the building of Tonterd-en steeple caused tlie formation of th© Goodwin Sands, a belief that was common and, ancient when it was solemnly handed on by an -aged peasant to Sir Thomas More four centuries ago. No bettor type ©f sailers ever sailed i-baii those who manned the. gr«-afc Challenger scientific expedition, yet when one of their number died and was buried at sea in'his sbot-Weight-©d hammock they sent a deputation to the officers asking whether -it was not a fact that their dead comrade after sinking. to a certain depth, would ‘‘find his level” and float there evermore . ’ (says a writer .in ‘The Children’s Newspaper’).', Sir John Murray, who helped to solve the Challenger seamen’s problem, lived to be asked a, similar question as to tlie Titanic.

The fact is, as Fir John used -to explain, that anything that will sink (o the bottom of a tumbler will sink t© the bottom of the deepest ocean. Upon that fact depends the livelihood of a countless population of weird and extraordinary forms of life whose world is th© deep ooze in fho abyss ©f sous miles deep. Food slowly rains clown upon them from the watery above; entire fishes keeping higher levels, all sorts, of dead creatures from all depths in life on the surface, all pour down to the depths.

JF gravitation ceased The water Toes not stop them. Not. that -water afc great depths is nos to some extent compressed. The creator the depth the less the compressibility. At a- depth ol 24.000 ft pressure reduces the bulk to 10,500 cubic feet of surface water to 10,000 cubic feet. Rut that- does not p ie * vent solid bodies from sinking. Gravity acts tliero,■ as everywhere, and a scientific calculation shows that wore gravitation to cease the oceans would at once rise 200 ft.

That would drown half England, and many other lands. Bufc wo need nob fear that natural laws "will fail us. Gravitation will hold the seas down and wil] pull to the ocean bed anything which is not buoyant enough to float.

Yet sailors will go on for mauv a day believing that things "find their level, 1 ’ and . those who set the Navy test were not so eccentric a s they seemed.