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 How Does That Work?
Who were Fahrenheit, Celsius, Doppler and Richter?
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.
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) into 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 later 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.
PHYSICIST CHRISTIAN DOPPLER (1803 1853) was born in Salzberg, Austria. Actually, he was a baby when he was born; he became a physicist after entering adulthood (pardon the subtle yet lame attempt at humor, but I just wanted to make sure that you're still paying attention). 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 phenomenon 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 actually 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 10-fold 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!
This story is part of the INVENTION MYSTERIES series by author Paul Niemann. More information is available at www.InventionMysteries.com.
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