摩擦鼻祖達芬奇塗鴉中的祕密
When you doodle, you're probably drawing something like a square that magicAlly turns into a 3D cube or your boss with devil horns. When Leonardo da Vinci was doodling, he was figuring out some of the fundamental laws of physics.
塗鴉的時候你可能會隨手畫個正方形，加幾筆變成一個正方體或是惡搞下老闆的頭像，將其畫成是帶着角的惡魔。與你不同，達芬奇在塗鴉的時候悟出了物理學的基本原理。In a new paper, Professor Ian M. Hutchings of the University of Cambridge argues that a sketch from da Vinci's journals shows that the Renaissance-era polymath was already working out his own ideas about the concepts of friction years earlier than previously thought.
劍橋大學伊恩·哈欽斯教授在自己的論文中指出，達芬奇文稿中的一張塗鴉顯示這位文藝復興時期的多面手在當時就已經想明白了物理學的基本原理，比我們認爲的時間要早數年。Hutchings argues that the sketches, which had previously been seen as inconsequential, were the first known place that da Vinci began to work out his theory of friction (or "tribology"). Da Vinci is known to have performed some of the first scientific work in figuring out friction, but when he began has remains a mystery.
哈欽斯表示，這些手稿之前並未受到重視，但其實正是這些塗鴉手稿纔是達芬奇發現摩擦力的“起點”。衆所周知，達芬奇是提出摩擦力科學理論的第一人，但是提出該理論的具體時間卻一直是個未解之謎。
The page in question is from 1493 and is currently held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The sketch is done in da Vinci's "mirror writing" style, done from right to left. When first examined by a director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in the 1920s, the director dismissed the notations as "irrelevant notes and diagrams in red chalk."
上文提到的這份手稿來自1493年，現存於倫敦的維多利亞與艾伯特博物館。這份塗鴉延續達芬奇一貫“鏡像書寫”的風格，以從右到左的格式呈現。20世紀20年代，當其第一次出現在維多利亞與艾伯特博物館，當時的館長將其判定爲“無甚關聯的筆記和圖畫，用紅色墨水書寫”.But Hutchings argues that the sketch actually shows blocks on the ground being pulled by a weight attached to a pulley—the same type of experiment you might do today in a high school physics class.
但是哈欽斯卻認爲，在這張草圖中，放置在地上的數個方塊由配有滑輪裝置砝碼拖動--這和高中物理課上做的實驗類型簡直如出一轍。The sketches and text show Leonardo understood the fundamentals of friction in 1493, said Professor Hutchings in an article put out by the University of Cambridge. "He knew that the force of friction acting between two sliding surfaces is proportional to the load pressing the surfaces together and that friction is independent of the apparent area of contact between the two surfaces. These are the 'laws of friction' that we nowadays usually credit to a French scientist, Guillaume Amontons, working two hundred years later."
在由劍橋大學發表的一篇論文中，哈欽斯教授寫到：“草圖和文字批註說明早在1493年達芬奇就已經想清楚了關於摩擦力的基本原理，他清楚兩個平面之間的摩擦力是與作用於其本身的作用力成正比，和兩個物體之間的接觸面積無關。而我們現在普遍認可的‘庫倫摩擦定律'（由法國物理學家庫倫·阿蒙特提出）比達芬奇晚了整整兩百年。Da Vinici, well-known for his many mechanical sketches and experiments, was fascinated by the laws governing how exactly physical objects moved. "Leonardo's sketches and notes were undoubtedly based on experiments, probably with lubricated contacts," said Hutchings. "He appreciated that friction depends on the nature of surfaces and the state of lubrication and his use and understanding of the ratios between frictional force and weight was much more nuanced than many have suggested."
達芬奇的機械圖和實驗很出名，他對物體的運動規律很感興趣。哈欽斯說道：“很顯然，達芬奇的草圖不是隨便畫畫，是有實驗基礎的，很可能是用了潤滑過的接觸面。他意識到物體之間摩擦力的大小取決於接觸面的材質，以及粗糙程度。達芬奇對於摩擦力和作用力之間的比例關係，不管是在實驗中的測試還是考量都遠比我們想象的要細緻的多”Still, while the sketches show a glimpse into the mind of a genius, they had little to do with the actual systemic theory of friction that was developed by the French scientist Guillaume Amontons nearly 200 years later. If only someone had looked at da Vinci's doodles a little closer.
雖然從這些塗鴉中我們得以一窺這位天才的超前觀念但是它們和兩百年後法國物理學家所提出的系統化的摩擦定律還有很大差距。除非有人能夠仔細加以研究。
