Gene E. Bloch said:
Very generous of you. Maybe I just didn't know
Do you happen to know whether Galileo have a scale of his own for his
glass float thermometer? It's showing up again in Christmas catalogs
(AKA seasonal snail SPAM).
Would that be Galileo's air thermometer (thermoscope) which had no scale
(since temperature wasn't yet considered a measurable quantity) or the
floating balls (Galilean aka gourd) thermometer invented later by some
academics to demonstate temperature on liquid density?
The "scale" for a Galilean thermometer is variable depending on who
manufactures the floats. They settle based on their weight which can be
whatever the maker choose for a float. A float might find equality in
density in the fluid at a 10, 12, 15 degree mark or whatever the maker
wants (who also determines if the degrees are F or C scaled). Of
course, for mass sales, you'd probably want the floats to be at a scale
of the audience to which the product targets a market. Since the tube
can only hold a small number of floats, this thermometer is only for
decoration. You might be able to tell a temperature of 76 F for one
ball floating in the middle with the others at the top and bottom but
you won't find out the temperature that is between. If there are 6
balls then you can determine all of 6 temperatures. For some models,
intermediate temperatures are the average of the lowest value at the top
and the highest values at the bottom (assuming linearity in density
change across the fluid). This thermometer has a narrow range of
measurement, like from 8 to 16 degrees each (i.e., one will measure
18-26F, another measures 64-80F, and so on). If they were to measure a
greater range, there wouldn't be enough space for the floats inside the
tube which means just a few floats and very little granularity in
measurement - unless you had a h-u-g-e tube with lots of floats. While
I've seen where a set of multiple Galilean thermometers were used to
cover multiple ranges of temperatures, the largest that I've personally
seen was a couple feet tall and probably had only a dozen balls inside
which supposedly gave you a 1/2 C granularity but I don't remember the
temperature range.
For where I've seen someone have this type of thermometer, it was more
of science art than used as a thermometer. In fact, in one household
where they had one, they still went to the indoor/outdoor thermometer to
check on temperature and never even thought of looking at the Galilean
one.
(And, yes, I'm having fun with this, not nitpicking your choices.)
For brevity, I clipped your thorough essay. Some of it was informative
(I'm serious, a little), and some of it seemed to be gentle humor. I'll
assume it was meant just that way
Actually it was merely to point out that someone reporting a nippy
temperature of 10 could have the temperature scale deduced by
elimination of what a value of 10 would mean on each scale. On all
scales other than Fahrenheit, 10 degrees wouldn't be considered nippy
cold but either pleasant, very warm, or impossible to survive.
I figure Jussi accidentally posted into the wrong newsgroup (so I won't
be surprised if he/she never replies here). He and Karl probably
inhabitate a different newsgroup and Jussi meant to post there.
