Written Report

MERCURY BAROMETER
 PARTS OF BAROMETER  HISTORY OF MERCURY BAROMETER  HOW MERCURY BAROMETER WORKS  MERCURY BAROMETERS FUNCTIONS

NATSC 003 FMA11FB2 (GROUP PRESENTATION)      JAYSON R REDOMA EDZON C. SISON MA. NADIA OCAMPO ROSELLE SABADO JAIRUS OBISPO

Mercury barometer:

Parts of mercury barometer: Glass tube: Are hollow pieces of borosilicate or flint glass used primarily as laboratory glassware. These is where the mercury uprise because of atmospheric pressure it mus be 76cm (29.92 in). Mercury dish: a disk like dish where the mercury will be put it must be wide and open so air pressure must contract with the mercury. Mercury: is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver,from "hydr-" water and "argyros" silver. Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure, mercury has one of the narrowest ranges of its liquid state of any metal. A heavy, silvery d-block metal, mercury is also one of the five metallic chemical elements that are liquid at or near room temperature and pressure, the others being caesium, francium, gallium, and rubidium. it is always seen in thermometer.

History of mercury barometer: The mercury barometer was first discovered by the Italian Evangelista Torricelli in 1643 and has been since then known as the Torricelli barometer. The principles on which the Torricelli aka the mercury barometer is based date since the time it was first discovered in the 17th century. Those principles although more than 300 years old are still the ones that stand at the base of a modern mercury barometer. By now you might be asking yourselves so how does a mercury barometer work ? and I m frankly glad you asked because we have the explanation ready. The barometer is one of the key instruments in the science of meteorology, and it was instrumental in answering a fundamental question of natural philosophy at the time of its invention: "Does the air have weight?". Construction of the first barometer in the mid-17th Century is commonly attributed to Evangelista Torricelli of the Florentine Academy, although Gasparo Berti unknowingly built the first one while trying to produce a vacuum a few years earlier. The story behind the development of the barometer goes like this. In a letter dated 1630, Giovan Battista Baliani a patrician from Genoa, asked Galileo Galilei for the reason why water did not rise through the syphon he had designed to carry water over a hill about 21 metres (70 ft) high. The prevailing thinking on how a suction pump worked held that the pump action created a vacuum, and, since "nature abhors a vacuum," the water immediately rose to fill the evacuated space. There was, it was believed, no limit to the height to which water could be raised. Experience showed something was amiss. Galileo investigated the situation and reported that the working limits of a suction pump made it impossible to raise a column of water any higher than 11 metres (33 ft). Beyond this limit, the vacuum force was insufficiently powerful to prevent the column of water from collapsing. Galileo passed his concern over the problem to his disciple Torricelli. Torricelli devised an experiment -- conducted by his student Vincenzo Viviani in 1643 -- which actually proved air had weight. To do so, they constructed the prototype mercury barometer. Torricelli had first built a water barometer, but it required a very long (18 m / 60 ft) and clumsy glass tube. By substituting mercury, which at room temperature is a liquid and about thirteen times more dense than water, he was able to reduce the working tube length to around 90 cm (35 inches). Torricelli's instrument consisted of a long-necked glass tube with a closed bulbous end. The tube was filled with mercury and then inverted into a basin also filled with mercury. Rather than run completely out of the tube, the height of the mercury column fell to a level of about 76 cm (30 inches) and then remained fairly steady, The top of the mercury column was observed to fluctuate by a few percent, in part due to changes in temperature and in part due to what we now know to be fluctuations in atmospheric pressure above the instrument. Torricelli was convinced by this experiment that what held up the mercury column was the weight or pressure that the air exerted on the mercury in the basin. He also believed that the space above the liquid created by the descent of

the mercury in the tube was completely empty, a true and stable vacuum.

As often happens in science, similar lines of thinking and experiments were taking place elsewhere, and perhaps some information was exchanged between scientists. Thus, although Torricelli is universally credited with inventing the barometer, two other noteworthy efforts must be cited. Historical documentation also suggests Gasparo Berti, an Italian mathematician and astronomer, may have performed similar experiments to Torricelli's a few years earlier while also working on Galileo's problem. Berti apparently constructed a huge lead tube, around 13 m (40 ft) long and attached it to his house. He filled the tube with water, then sealed the top. When the bottom of the tube was opened into a filled pail of water, the water level in the tube dropped then didn't move. Berti claimed that he had produced a vacuum in the tube above the water line, the result he sought, but likely he did not realize he had also just built a huge, and the first, barometer. French scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes described the design of an experiment on atmospheric pressure determination as early as 1631, but there is no evidence that he built a working barometer at that time. On the other hand, if one wishes to be picky and require a true barometer to have a scale by which to quantify readings, Descartes appears to have been first to do so. In a 1647 letter to Marin Mersenne, he wrote: "But, so that we may also know if changes of weather and of location make any difference to it, I am sending you a paper scale two and a half feet long, in which the third and fourth inches above two feet are divided into lines; and I am keeping an exactly similar one here, so that we may see whether our observations agree." In 1648, French mathematician Blaise Pascal (after whom the basic SI unit of pressure, the pascal, is named) put forward a theory that air pressure decreased with altitude above sea level. He enlisted his brother-in-law Florin Perier to carry a barometer up to the peak of the Puy-de-Dome mountain in the Massif Central of France. Perier was astonished to observe a much diminished mercury column height by about 8.6 cm (3.6 inches) when he reached the 1490-m (4888-ft) summit compared to his base reading, confirming Pascal's hypothesis. For about twenty years thereafter, development of the barometer was slow. Then in 1665, Englishman Robert Hooke created the wheel barometer which added a circular scale and dial assembly to the mercury barometer. Barometer development and refinement then began a century of great progress. The word barometer to describe the pressure measuring instrument has been attributed to English scientist Robert Boyle who in a 1669 manuscript Continuation of New Experiments described plans for a truly portable barometer.

The concept of the aneroid (meaning "without liquid") barometer in which pressure changes were detected using a sealed bellows was proposed by the eminent mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz around 1700 but never constructed. The first working version of the now-common aneroid barometer was built in 1843 by French scientist Lucien Vidie. By removing the need for the delicate mercury column and easy-to-spill liquid, the aneroid barometer was a very portable instrument. Thus, it became as common a meteorological instrument for explorers and field researchers. With its ability to foretell weather changes, the barometer became a common tool for mariners and farmers who could afford to own one. Soon, many homes had a barometer hanging on their wall. Today, sensitive electronic sensors have replaced the metal aneroid cells as the detector of choice for home and workplace use as well as many scientific applications. These detectors, coupled with microprocessor chips, have allowed the construction of pocket barometers/altimeters at prices affordable to many. How mercury barometer works: The principles on which the barometer works can be easily illustrated as follows: take one long glass tube that is sealed at one end and then fill it with liquid mercury metal. Turn the filled tube upside down and place it in a bowl filled with mercury also known as a cistern. When turning the tube upside down a bit of mercury will leak into the cistern and leave a vacuum at the top of the tube making our mercury barometer a real life example. What will happen next is that air pressure will start pushing down on the mercury in the cistern which will at its turn push up with an equal pressure on the mercury in the tube making the mercury in the tube go up or down, thus indicating the exact air pressure in the surrounding environment. Under normal circumstances, the column of mercury in the glass tube stands at a height of about 30 (29.92) inches (75 centimeters) when measured at sea level. An explanation of the above is pictured below for an easier understanding. mercury barometer picture So to recap here s what you have to do to get a working mercury barometer: take one tube and fill it with liquid mercury, take a recipient anything that resembles to a can and it s water tight and fill that one with liquid mercury as well. Turn the tube upside down and place it in the cistern. Wait 5 minutes and measure the height at which the mercury column stands in the tube and that s the air pressure in the surroundings. If you find barometers interesting you might want to consider purchasing a mercury barometer. There are various places where you can successfully buy mercury barometers at reasonable prices and in good standing. Ebay and Amazon are just a few of the big names where you could easily purchase an antique mercury barometer. A specialized place where you could also get more information on antique mercury

barometers is Charles Edwin s place where he showcases some of the nicest antique mercury barometers. Although I don t really emphasize on purchasing an used barometer because of the healthy risks they poses as a last alternative you could resort to this and purchase a used barometer and stay on the cheap side. Mercury barometers function: A barometer is commonly used for weather prediction, as high air pressure in a region indicates fair weather while low pressure indicates that storms are more likely. Localized high atmospheric pressure acts as a barrier to approaching weather systems, diverting their course. Low atmospheric pressure, on the other hand, represents the path of least resistance for a weather system, making it more likely that low pressure will be associated with increased storm activity.

Barometric pressure, air pressure, and atmospheric pressure are frequently interchanged terms. They all can be defined as the force per unit area exerted against a surfaceby the weight of air above that surface at any given point in the Earth s atmosphere. The main sea level pressure accurately equals to 101.325 kPa. Many factors affect the barometric pressure in an area at any given time. Atmospheric pressure is closely approximated by the hydrostatic pressure caused by the weight of air above the measurement point. Low pressure areas have less atmospheric mass above their location, whereas high pressure areas have more atmospheric mass above their location. Also, as elevation increases there is less overlying atmospheric mass, so that pressure decreases with increasing elevation. Barometric pressure varies widely around the world and these changes are important in studying weather and climate. Meteorologist refer to these changes as low or high pressure fronts. Low pressure systems are generally formed by air becoming less dense as a result of heating. This is generally the reason for storms and tropical cyclones. Winds around the low pressure system move counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. High pressure systems occur often, but not always, when there is an uneven heating of the ground, causing the hot air to rise and spread out. This rising air creates an air void , or a low-pressure system in the area above the ground. When the air cools and sinks back down to the ground, a high-pressure system is created. High pressure systems are associated with clear, cool weather. Around high-pressure systems, winds flow clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Barometric pressure is measured by a barometer. The first instrument was invented in 1643 by Evangelista Torricelli. His barometer used a glass vacuum tube that is inserted into a container of mercury that is exposed to the pressure of the air. The air pressing down on the mercury in the container forces an amount of the mercury up into the glass tube. The height to which the mercury rises is directly proportional to the pressure of the atmosphere. Today aneroid barometers, invented by the French scientist Lucien Vidie in 1843, are the most widely used instrument to detect air pressure. An aneroid is a flexible metal bellow that has been sealed after removing some of it s air (a partial vacuum). A higher atmospheric pressures will squeeze the metal bellow while a lower pressure will allow it to expand. This expansion of the metal is usually mechanically coupled to a dial needle which will point to a scale indicating the barometric pressure. Barometric pressure affects every day of our life. Here is an in depth article on the topic. Here on Universe Today we a great article about the atmospheric pressure on Earth.Astronomy Cast offers a good episode about atmospheres, because without an atmosphere there would be no barometric pressure.