In 1895 Professor A.M. Worthington published an a count of his 1894 presentation to the Royal Institution highlighting his studies of fluid dynamics via the observations of falling drops of water. The project, simultaneously concerned with both physics and aesthetics, devised new technologies and methodologies to capture images of drops of water in motion. The book itself visually highlights these phenomena and its often magnificently petic prose, somewhat unusual in the context of a scientific journal, provides an even more direct bridge between the sometimes too disparately imagined worlds of science and art. These three compositions aim to highlight Professor Worthington’s studies and the artwork he produced for “The Romance of Science.”
“The splash of a drop is a transaction which is accomplished in the twinkling of an eye, and it may seem to some that a man who proposes to discourse on the matter for an hour must have lost all sense of proportion. If that opinion exists, I hope this evening to be able to remove it, and to convince you that we have to deal with an exquisitely regulated phenomenon, and one which very happily illustrates some of the fundamental properties of fluids.”
-A.M. Worthington