Galileo Galileo

Galileo figaro magnificoo... I'm just a poor boy nobody loves me....
now all join in.

This is my Galileo thermometer which I have had for years.  Invented not by Galileo but by a committee of academics (it's a wonder they got anything done) in 1666.  They became popular again apparently in the 1990's

This is what Wiki says about it:

Although named after the 16th–17th-century physicist Galileo, the thermometer was not invented by him. [Galileo did invent a thermometer, called Galileo's air thermometer (more accurately called a thermoscope), in or before 1603.[/i]
The instrument now known as a Galileo thermometer was invented by a group of academics and technicians known as the Accademia del Cimento of Florence, who included Galileo's pupil, Torricelli and Torricelli's pupil Viviani. Details of the thermometer were published in the Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell'Academia del Cimento sotto la protezione del Serenissimo Principe Leopoldo di Toscana e descritte dal segretario di essa Accademia (1666), the Academy's main publication. The English translation of this work (1684) describes the device ('The Fifth Thermometer') as 'slow and lazy', a description that is reflected in an alternative Italian name for the invention, the termometro lento (slow thermometer).[5] The outer vessel was filled with 'rectified spirits of wine' (a concentrated solution of ethanol in water); the weights of the glass bubbles were adjusted by grinding a small amount of glass from the sealed end; and a small air space was left at the top of the main vessel to allow 'for the Liquor to rarefie' . A Galileo thermometer is a thermometer made of a sealed glass cylinder containing a clear liquid and several glass vessels of varying density. The individual floats rise or fall in proportion to their respective density and the density of the surrounding liquid as the temperature changes.


Thanks to Laurie for great themes for this months Mono Monday and wishing her a speedy recovery.