Throughout his life Benjamin Franklin was interested in the calming effect of oil on turbulent water. In 1774, he described a series of experiments in which he poured oil on a pond in England. He observed that a teaspoon of olive oil poured on the surface spread to about one half of an acre.
“…But recollecting what I had formerly read in Pliny, I resolved to make some experiment of the effect of oil on water, when I should have opportunity… …At length being at Clapham where there is, on the common, a large pond, which I observed to be one day very rough with the wind, I fetched out a cruet of oil, and dropt a little of it on the water. I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface; but the effect of smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first on the leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side, where they began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square, which spread amazingly, and extending itself gradually till it reached the leeside, making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre, as smooth as a looking-glass. After this, I contrived to take with me, whenever I went into the country, a little oil in the upper hollow joint of my bamboo cane, with which I might repeat the experiment as opportunity should offer; and I found it constantly to succeed. In these experiments, one circumstance struck me with particular surprise. This was the sudden, wide, and forcible spreading of a drop of oil on the face of the water, which I do not know that anybody has hitherto considered. If a drop of oil is put on a polished marble table, or on a looking-glass that lies horizontally; the drop remains in its place spreading very little. But when put on water it spreads instantly many feet round, becoming so thin as to produce the prismatic colours, for a considerable space and beyond them so much thinner as to be invisible, except in its effect of smoothing waves at a much greater distance…”
