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Who
were Fahrenheit, Celsius, Doppler and Richter?
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By Paul Niemann
[July 26, 2007]
Who invented the Richter scale? Or the
Fahrenheit scale? This sounds like a "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?"
joke, but it's no joke. People named Richter, Doppler, Fahrenheit
and Celsius really did exist, and they invented devices to help
people measure heat, cold and the weather.
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 Only one was an American,
while the other three were European. Fahrenheit and Celsius lived
mostly during the 1700s, Doppler lived during the 1800s, and Richter
lived during the 1900s. You know what they invented because they
became household names, so here's the scoop on each inventor.
Physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was born in Danzig,
Poland, which is now Gdansk. He invented the first mercury
thermometer in 1714, and then developed the first accurate
thermometer 10 years later. Along with his improved thermometer,
Fahrenheit introduced the temperature scale that bears his name. At
the time, there were already 19 other temperature scales being used.
In addition to determining that water boils at 212 degrees and
freezes at 32 degrees, Fahrenheit discovered that every liquid has
its own unique boiling point. Americans use the Fahrenheit scale,
but people who live in countries that use the metric system use the
Celsius scale.
Astronomy professor Anders Celsius (1701-1744) was born in
Uppsala, Sweden. He built what was originally known as the
Centigrade scale in 1742 and named his scale -- which contained 100
degrees, or steps -- the "Centigrade" scale because the word "centi"
means "hundred" and "grade" means "steps" in Latin.
Celsius figured that the point at which water freezes must be the
same temperature at which snow melts. He would often stick a mercury
thermometer (which Fahrenheit had invented earlier) in the snow and
measure the temperature at which the snow melted.
Oddly enough, his original scale showed zero degrees as the
boiling point of water and 100 degrees as the freezing point. The
scale was reversed the following year so that zero degrees became
known as the freezing point and 100 degrees as the boiling point.
The name of his scale was changed from Centigrade to Celsius in
1948.
[to top of second column]
 |
 Physicist Christian Doppler (1803-1853) was born in Salzberg,
Austria. You're probably familiar with the term "Doppler radar"
because the weatherman uses it on the weather reports.
In 1842, Doppler explained the "Doppler effect." An easy way to
understand the Doppler effect is by noticing the difference in the
sound of a train's whistle (or a police siren, ambulance, etc.) as
it moves farther away -- the pitch increases as the vehicle moves
toward you and decreases as it moves away from you. This was later
shown to work with light as well. Today, Doppler radar is used to
help predict the weather, as it can see the winds inside of storms,
making it helpful in locating and predicting the arrival of
tornadoes.
Seismologist Charles Richter (1900-1985) was born in
Hamilton, Ohio. His Richter scale measures the height of the seismic
waves released during an earthquake. One misconception that people
have regarding the Richter scale is that it's an instrument or
device. The Richter scale is actually a series of tables and charts
that correlate the scale to the seismogram readings; the machine
that shows the results is called a seismograph.
The numbers on the Richter scale measure the earthquake in
tenfold units, meaning that an earthquake that registers a five is
10 times more powerful than one that registers a four, one that
registers a four is 10 times more powerful than one that registers a
three, and so on.
Another misconception about the Richter scale is that 10 is the
highest possible measure of an earthquake. In reality, the Richter
scale is an open-ended scale, and while it is possible to hit a 10,
it has never happened since the scale was first introduced in 1935.
The Richter scale has also been used to measure the strength of
quakes on the moon and Mars.
And that pretty much covers it.
[Text from file received
from Paul Niemann]
Paul Niemann may be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2007
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