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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 28 inches higher than the mercury in the vessel. Having marked the specific gravity of the mercury, the weight of the column of air between the mercury and the top of the tube became of course apparent, from the respective proportions of air and mercury and the whole length of the tube. Torricelli thus constructed what is at this time considered the best form of barometer. It should be stated that in 1601, that is, 12 years before Torricelli's observations, Descartes, the French philosopher, had made the same observation, although he does not appear to have turned it to any account. Torricelli died in 1647, leaving his great discovery not quite complete; for, though he had made it apparent that the weight of the water and the mercury was a counterpoise of something, most probably of a weight of air, the latter was not quite certain. The invention, however, was taken up by Pascal, Mer- senne, and others in France; and by -Boyle, in England, the latter, by means of the air-pump, being enabled to subject air of different degrees of density, to the test of the barometer. Pascal, who had repeated Torricelli's experiments at Rouen, before more than 500 persons, and obtained the same results as Torricelli, did the same; and assuming that the mercury in the Torricellian tube was suspended by the weight or pressure of the air, he suggested that it would necessarily fall in ascending a higher mountain, by diminution of the superincumbent column of air. At his request, his relative, M. Perrier, tried the barometer at the summit and base of the mountain in Puy de Dome, in Auvergne; and the result was that the mercury, which at the base stood 26 inches (French), was only 23 inches at the summit; the mountain being between three and four thousand feet above the level of the sea. A like re...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217909112 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217909116 |
| Weight | 1.04 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.71 In |
| List Price | $23.46 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 318 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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