Yesterday I wrote a little about the upcoming weather change for us. Everyone seems to be itching for the stretch of warm sunny days. But did you know that we owe our understanding of how these air patterns affect us to yet another German? His name was Otto von Guericke. Not much is known about him. He was born in November of 1602 in the city of Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt. This city went through many turbulent times during his lifetime, which involved the 30 Year's War, but he still managed to find his love in science, and also in politics.
Magdeburg, which was the home of the first Holy Roman Emperor, suffered its own Sherman's March during the war. Because of earlier involvements with Martin Luther, the town was strongly protestant. Of course when the Catholic generals came through, they made it a point to leave their mark on this city. The Count of Tilly, who was one of the most ruthless, arrived in 1631. After descending on the city with his troops, he had 20,000 inhabitants killed and burned the town in what is known as the Sack of Magdeburg. By 1648, when the war ended, only 400 residents remained. One of them was Guericke.
Guericke served as mayor for the town starting in 1646 and continued as such until 1676. It was during this time that he also developed his interest in vacuums. In 1650, he developed a vacuum pump. He discovered the effects of air pressure on objects within a vacuum by using horse teams to try to pull apart copper semi-spheres. (Think of two sides of a plastic Easter egg.) The air inside had been evacuated creating the vacuum. Then, he had horses try to pull them apart. In one demonstration, a team of 24 horses couldn't pull them apart. Next, he would let the air back in and see that they easily came apart. (Interestingly enough, all these blogs seem to come back to things we have seen or done: these original copper spheres are in the Deutches Museum.)
He took this knowledge and then began to apply it to air pressure around us using the newly invented barometer, the instrument we use to measure air pressure. Going further, he then began to make forecasts based on his air pressure readings.
I came to find him, though, based on a search I had for the Van de Graaff machine, thinking its inventor might be German with a name like that. However, it was actually Guericke that came up with a friction-based electrostatic machine that would later give birth to the Van de Graaff machine. It seemed not only the pressure and vacuum of the atmosphere interested, but also the forces of static electricity. He invented his machine in 1663 using a sulphur globe that could be rubbed by one's hand to generate the static electricity.
Otto von Guericke died in 1686 in Hamburg, Germany. Although there may not be much preserved from his earlier life, his survival of the 30 Year's War, or his complete collection of inventions, he had a lasting impact on modern science - some would even argue that it was on the same level as Isaac Newton, Copernicus, and Galilei. Today, the university in Magdeburg is named after him, and there is also a monument in the city center to honor him.
The word for today is pressure: der Druck (drook where the "oo" is more like "book".)
The question for today is based on current events. Locally, the G20 Summit that is going on today in Britain is the hot news topic. So my question today is "what is this G20 Summit all about and is Germany involved?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
