How to classify every motion and impact of water
A research programme: eddies, bounces, falls, and the force of clear versus turbid water
This page is a dense programme of research into moving water, written in Leonardo's mirror script with no diagram. He directs himself to treat separately the motions, the eddies, the bounces and the falls of water, and to record the differences between turbid and clear water, furious and slow, deep and shallow, and rivers narrow and wide. He further lists waters falling over stones, sand or tufa, and calls for a full account of the impacts water makes at the surface, in the middle and at the bottom.
On this page
A scheme for cataloguing the behaviour of water
Leonardo resolves to study, each on its own, the motions, the eddies, the bounces and the falls of water, and then to set down the differences between turbid and clear waters, furious and slow, deep and shallow, and the fury of narrow rivers against wide ones. He adds waters running over large or small stones, over sand or tufa.
The impacts of falling water
He plans to describe every nature of the impacts water makes at the surface, in the middle and at the bottom, with their various obliquities and the different natures of the object struck. Waters falling from a height are distinguished by whether they strike stones, run along an even bed, or fall through the air alone in a round, slender, divided or joined shape.