Screw-driving lever, tent frame, and notes on motion
Mechanical studies with notes on the balance, impetus in a medium, and calculations
A crowded working sheet combining mechanical sketches with theoretical notes. At the centre a vertical shaft ends in a screw (auger), which one caption explains is driven into the ground by a lever before the pole rises upright, while an upper note describes the forked converging rods of a collapsible pavilion set apart at their poles. Alongside these run a note on a balance that turns over when its pivot sits below the beam, and a longer physical argument that the motion of an impetus is spent by degrees, sooner in a denser medium. Columns of figures and multiplications, some written with the sheet turned upside down, fill the margins.
On this page
Lever driving a screw into the ground
A tall vertical shaft terminates in a helical screw at its foot. The note labels a as the lever that forces the screw (vite) into the earth before the pole a b is raised upright, describing the sequence of setting the shaft.
Forked rods of a collapsible pavilion
The upper-left note explains that the forks of the converging rods are placed in position before the pavilion (padiglione) descends, spaced apart at the poles that serve as their supports. A tangle of curved lines at the right may relate to this collapsing frame.
Consumption of impetus in a medium
The lower-right note argues that the motion of anything impetuous is spent by degrees, in less space and time as the medium it moves through is denser. A medium penetrated without recoil stays uniform, reducing the body at last to equal rarity; if it recoils, motion is lost.
Behaviour of a balance
A note on the left asks after the length of the material and considers a balance whose pivot lies below the beam, so that the balance turns upside down, while in another case it stays in its first position. Only fragments of the reasoning survive.
Marginal calculations and squarings
Columns of numbers and multiplications occupy the margins, including short lists (64, 31, 08, 084) and a block of workings written with the sheet inverted (2304, 144, 16, 9216 and larger products). They read as arithmetic exercises rather than accounts.