Another Greek, Aristotle, didn't think you could have a vacuum. He thought for something to be real, it MUST be made of something.
Ancient Greek thinker Democritus did a 'thought experiment', imagining that he cut a stone into two, then the two halves into two, and then kept on doing this. He reasoned you'd end up with something that couldn't be divided up any more - a particle. He thought if you kept doing this you'd end up with nothing (we know this is impossible). He also thought particles were separated by empty space - a vacuum. EXPLAINED - feeling matter EXPLAINED - why matter like gases moved
In 1654 German Otto showed that two teams of horses could not separate two cup-like hemispheres that contained a vacuum (search on Google for "Madgeburg hemispheres").
Italian Evangelista in 1643 created a vacuum on top of a sealed column of liquid for the first time, destroying Aristotle's ideas.
Reasoned when you squash a gas, the aether that Newton referred to must escape. He squashed a certain mass of air in a sealed container. He still found that it had the same mass. He concluded that 'aether' had NOT escaped. He then wondered if particles were squashy, like springs. The problem was that if 'aether' was in the way, you couldn't squash a gas AND keep it at the same mass (a bit like squeezing a sponge full of water and finding that the water doesn't squeeze out, which of course it doesn't). Robert Boyle then agreed with Democritus, much to Newton's distaste! Many scientists also didn't agree with Boyle at the time as Newton was discrediting him.
Imagined particles of a gas were held in something called 'aether' (a bit like a 'Wispa' or 'Aero' bar).
J B Perrin tested Albert Einstein's theory and found it to be correct.
Einstein looked at pollen grains floating on water and said this was because water particles were bumping into them. He came up with a theory of how far a pollen grain would be moved by water particles.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close