TORRICELLIAN

Tor`ri*cel"li*an, a.

Definition: Of or pertaining to Torricelli, an Italian philosopher and mathematician, who, in 1643, discovered that the rise of a liquid in a tube, as in the barometer, is due to atmospheric pressure. See Barometer. Torricellian tube, a glass tube thirty or more inches in length, open at the lower end and hermetically sealed at the upper, such as is used in the barometer.

– Torricellian vacuum (Physics), a vacuum produced by filling with a fluid, as mercury, a tube hermetically closed at one end, and, after immersing the other end in a vessel of the same fluid, allowing the inclosed fluid to descend till it is counterbalanced by the pressure of the atmosphere, as in the barometer. Hutton.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

23 January 2025

LEFT

(adjective) being or located on or directed toward the side of the body to the west when facing north; “my left hand”; “left center field”; “the left bank of a river is bank on your left side when you are facing downstream”


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Coffee Trivia

Some 16th-century Italian clergymen tried to ban coffee because they believed it to be “satanic.” However, Pope Clement VII loved coffee so much that he lifted the ban and had coffee baptized in 1600.

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