Water Studies: Meeting Currents, Narrows, and Waterfalls
How streams cross, speed through narrows, and break into fine mist
This water-study page gathers four observations on moving water, illustrated with flow lines, a wavy narrows, and a plunging cascade at lower right. When one current strikes another across a transverse line it slips beneath as a cover and runs faster below than above; where a river narrows it speeds up and, meeting slower water beyond, breaks into eddies that erode the banks. The water leaps highest nearest the point where a fall plunges in, and impetuous water dashing between its banks throws off much of itself as fine mist.
On this page
Two currents meeting: one slips beneath the other
Water descending onto the surface of another watercourse along a transverse line keeps the course it has begun in a straight line down to the bottom. Making itself a cover over the water it has struck, it flows more swiftly below than above.
A river speeds through a narrows, then eddies where it widens
Where a river narrows it flows with greater speed, raising its surface and rushing with fury through the constriction. At the end of this course it meets slower water, and finding resistance it turns into circular movements that battle and erode the transverse banks.
Where water leaps highest at a waterfall
The water that leaps highest above its natural level is that which lies nearest to the plunge, where the falling water submerges into the water beneath it.
Impetuous water broken into mist
In the many and various percussions water makes as it rushes impetuously between its banks, it sends a great part of itself off into fine mist.