thermoscope
Sign in to savethumb|upright=0.65|Galileo Galilei|Galileo thermoscope, The [[Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris]] A thermoscope is a device that shows changes in temperature. A typical design is a tube in which a liquid rises and falls as the temperature changes. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from it with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
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4 sectionsContents
- Function
- History
- See also
- References
thumb|upright=0.65|Galileo Galilei|Galileo thermoscope, The [[Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris]] A thermoscope is a device that shows changes in temperature. A typical design is a tube in which a liquid rises and falls as the temperature changes. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from it with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
== Function == thumb|Principle of a thermoscope. The air in the bulb expands at higher temperatures, which lowers the liquid level in the tube. Devices employing both heat and pressure were common during Galileo's time, used for fountains, nursing, or bleeding in medicine. The device was built from a small vase filled with water, attached to a thin vertically rising pipe, with a large empty glass ball at the top. Changes in temperature of the upper ball would exert positive or negative pressure on the water below, causing it to rise or lower in the thin column. The device established fixed points but does not measure specific quantity, although it can tell when something is warmer than another thing.