Intersecting Water Jets: Four Effects of Colliding Streams
How oblique jets penetrate and carry one another when they meet in the air
Leonardo studies what happens when jets of water spouting from vessels cross one another in mid-air. Four demonstrations set out the principal effects: depending on which stream is the more oblique, one penetrates the other and carries part or all of the struck water along its own path. A tall vessel with issuing jets is drawn at the upper right, with two further jet diagrams at the lower right; the rest of the page is dense mirror-script.
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Four demonstrations of jets colliding in the air
Four demonstrations suffice to prove the four principal effects of waters that strike one another in the air. In the first, the more oblique stream penetrates the less oblique and carries the struck part with it; in the second, the less oblique penetrates the more oblique in part; in the third the more oblique carries the less oblique off entirely; and the fourth does the opposite.
Oblique streams penetrating toward the center of the world
These four are the ways in which waters moving to one and the same aspect penetrate one another with oblique lines directed toward the center of the world. The behaviour is governed by the relative obliquity and force of the falling streams.
Equal-thickness jets at varying obliquity
A pair of analogous figures shows various obliquities toward the east with equal thicknesses of water in the air. The equal cross-section isolates obliquity as the variable governing which stream prevails.