Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit facts for kids
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was a German physicist. He became known for the precise instruments he made. The degree Fahrenheit is named after him. He was the first to be able to determine the temperature with precision. His thermometers used Ethyl alcohol at first, but he later switched to using mercury. When he read an article by Guillaume Amontons about using mercury in barometers, he got the idea of using that substance for his thermometers. He calinbrated them to a temperature he could produce easily, -17.8 C.
In the year 1721 he discovered that water can be cooled below its freezing point without actually turning into ice.
Fahrenheit also developed a hydrometer, a pycnometer and a hypsobarometer
Images for kids
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Location of Fahrenheit's birth in Gdańsk
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Thermometer with Fahrenheit (symbol °F) and Celsius (symbol °C) units. The application of mercury (1714) and Fahrenheit scale (1724) for liquid-in-glass thermometers ushered in a new era of accuracy and precision in thermometry.
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A medical mercury-in-glass maximum thermometer. Daniel Fahrenheit's mercury-in-glass thermometer was far more reliable and accurate than any that had existed before, and the mercury thermometers in use today are made in the way Fahrenheit devised
