Name: Kaleidoscope
Uploaded: 2019-07-19
Duration: 3 min 46 s
Description: You've probably seen this toy with beautiful and colourful patterns constantly moving inside it. This is called a kaleidoscope. Let’s build one to understand...

Question

How could a mercury column of height

76 cm

exert a pressure equal to that exerted by a water column of height

10.3 m

?

Accepted Answer

This is proved with the help of torricelli's experiment. A vertical rubber tube taken and filled with water and closed the upper end of the tube. The moment the water level in the tube reaches about $10.3$ metres from the upper surface of water in the tumbler, the flow of water stops. Hence, it represents that the pressure exerted by a column of water of $10.3$ metre height is equivalent to air pressure.

Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli did a similar experiment by using mercury instead of water. He saw that under normal conditions the pressure exerted by a vertical column of mercury of height $76 cm$ is equal to pressure exerted by air.

Hence, from these experiments we conclude that the pressure exerted by air is equivalent to pressure exerted by a water column of height $10.3$ metre or a column of mercury of height $76 cm$ .

The height of the water and mercury is different due to density of the liquid.

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