If you have a stairwell at least three stories tall, you can make a water
barometer from 10-11 meters of hardware-store plastic tubing, two small
rubber stoppers, and a bucket of water. I prefer the less squishable
translucent tubing to the flexible clear tygon stuff, because the clear
stuff will collapse under the vacuum at the top of the water column. I fill
the tubing with water (flow the water through till the air bubbles all come
out), stopper both ends, have the students help me stretch the tube up the
stairwell, put the bottom end into the water in the bucket, and uncork the
bottom end. Instant barometer! For quantitative measurements of air
pressure for other lab experiments, one can get aneroid barometers that
don't use mercury.
Vickie Frohne
-----Original Message-----
From: Bernard Cleyet [mailto:anngeorg@PACBELL.NET]
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 9:59 AM
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Subject: Re: Unknown Apparatus (mercury)
" .... a dozen hygrometers, two nice
barometers."
Hg in hygrometers? Please explain. Also what have you used as
substitute for the Hg barometers?
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