Sunday, June 9, 2013

Sunday Science Lesson with Audrey

Mom has a Galileo Thermometer.   For those not familiar with them, there are a number of glass globes - "bubbles" - in the tube of fluid that have slightly different buoyancies.   Each is labeled with a temperature (4 degrees F apart) and to tell the temperature you look for the globe that just floats within the liquid.    Globes corresponding to lower temperatures sink and globes corresponding to higher temperatures float at the top.

On June 1st, Mom looked at the thermometer and all the globes were sitting at the bottom.    Audrey demonstrates:


The "hottest" globe is labeled 80 degrees, so it was over 80 degrees Fahrenheit inside our house.   And that was WITH the air conditioning running.  The weather was hot and muggy outside.  

Today, the thermometer looks like this (without any air conditioning on):


That orange globe is labeled 72, so it is about 72.  In fact, the orange globe was tending to sink more, so it is probably 73-74.  

According to what we looked up, the fluid in the tube is not water, but something like ethanol (alcohol)  whose density changes more with temperature than water's does.      

Mom was surprised because, although she has had the thermometer for a while, she had not realized it cannot "measure" above 80 degrees F.   She hasn't paid a lot of attention to what temperature it was telling us.  She just liked to look at it!   

We bet Punapippuri's and Tonks Tails' humans can tell us a lot about things like this!!    They are Physics experts.   


20 comments:

  1. Those things are so cool! My Dad used to have one of those but it went missing...seriously I had nothing to do with that!

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  2. Audrey, I do fanks you becsuse mom said she always wondered if those things worked. Now we see they do, thanks to you. (oh, that rhymes!) xxo

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  3. Dear Audrey, Thank you for the science lesson. We had wondered how these worked. They are pretty and easier to read than regular thermometers....

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  4. This is neat. I never knew about these. I'd like to have one. Audrey, thanks for sharing!

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  5. that is too cool! I had never heard of anything like that. Thanks for sharing and for the explanation!

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  6. That's so interesting. We've never heard or seen anything like that.

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  7. My human loves those thermometers! We don't have one, mainly because we live in earthquake country and I hate to say this, but we are due for a pretty good shaker soon! And you are right, they are filled with some sort of fluid that would not be good for kitties if it broke.

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  8. Whoa - that is cool. We've never seen anything like that before. Hmm M says she might try to find one of those.

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  9. Oh! The Human hates the Scantron! Because sometimes a kid chooses a "wrong" multiple choice answer but writes a clever little explanation about why she chose the answer she did and sometimes the Human sees her reasoning and gives her the point anyway. Plus, the Human puts quite a lot of short answer + essay q's on her finals. We had forgotten (never knew?) that your Mom was a teacher!
    We knew about Aiti being a Big Physics Smarty-Pants, but we thought the Tonks mom worked at Hallmark? Or maybe she does and she does physics on the side--she flies planes, right? We are in AWE of science folk.

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  10. Thanks, Audrey! That sure is a nice thermometer to look at.

    I think if we had one, Russell would break it right away.

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  11. oooh WAIT, we have to go meet this Punapippuri!

    Tell Spitty that yeah, our mom is one of those weird humans who couldn't figure out what they wanted to do in life so she went back to school to get her master's in physics. (*eyeroll* As if she couldn't have had a far more fascinating time just staying home with us...? We rest our case)

    She decided to stay in film/TV(we told you she was weird, right) and instead of finishing her degree she married a physicist instead. So now she works with him on the side, mainly in radiation physics - though less & less as the years go by.

    So yeah, we have two weird GEEKS for parents (HELP).

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  12. Mom always remembers about the humans of Maxwell and Faraday and Allie because, after all, those names Maxwell and Faraday............ they are Famous Physics Peoples. So you boys have a lot to live up to!

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  13. We always wondered how those thermometers worked.

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  14. Fanks for the science lesson, Audrey! WE always wondered how those things worked! :)

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  15. My man cat Parker's Mom is a Chemist geek so she probably knows all that. If your AC was on and it was still 80, you need more freon in your unit. We had that problem last week.

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  17. Fizzicks means too much maff says the Human. She'll stick to Shakespeare and stuffs and leave teh fizzicks and maffs to the smarty pants peoples.

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  19. I think that is about the coolest thing that I have ever seen. I really, really want one of those. Thank you to the kitty who demonstrated the proper way to use the device.

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