Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Our First Thermometers

What is a Thermometer? "Thermometers measure temperature, by using materials that change in some way when they are heated or cooled. In a mercury or alcohol thermometer the liquid expands as it is heated and contracts when it is cooled, so the length of the liquid column is longer or shorter depending on the temperature. Modern thermometers are calibrated in standard temperature units such as Fahrenheit or Celsius."




Early History of Thermometers: The first thermometers were called thermoscopes and while several inventors invented a version of the thermoscope at the same time, Italian inventor Santorio Santorio was the first inventor to put a numerical scale on the instrument. Galileo Galilei invented a rudimentary water thermometer in 1593 which, for the first time, allowed temperature variations to be measured. In 1714, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer, the modern thermometer.



The Farenheight & Celsius Scales: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was the German physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709, and the mercury thermometer in 1714. In 1724, he introduced the temperature scale that bears his name - Fahrenheit Scale. -AND- The Celsius temperature scale is also referred to as the "centigrade" scale. Centigrade means "consisting of or divided into 100 degrees". The Celsius scale, invented by Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius (1701-1744), has 100 degrees between the freezing point (0 C) and boiling point (100 C) of pure water at sea level air pressure. The term "Celsius" was adopted in 1948 by an international conference on weights and measures.














1 comment:

  1. Wow its pretty crazy to think about what life would be like without a thermometer. And then to think about like in celsius degrees. When we think about how americans according the rest of the world fo things backwards, like using the metric scale. We use farenheight degrees thanks to Danial and i rhank him for it

    ReplyDelete