Question

Can someone explain to me what the torricelli experiment means?

Answer 1

If you suck some juice up with a straw and put your finger on it, it won't drain down. Torricelli is given the credit, but I saw my baby brother do it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=265icrI3HkM&feature=related

Answer 2

Torricelli's experiment:
Spring 1644, Florence (Italy):
Venue of a famous experiment: Torricelli did his experiment with quicksilver or mercury.
He proved two things with this experiment:
1, Nature doesn't abhor the void (nature doesn't fear vacuum)
2, and that the air has weight:
He used a glass barometric tube of about 1 m in length which was open at one end and closed at the other end. He also used a glass funnel, which was used to pour in mercury. He put the glass funnel inside the one end open glass barometric tube of 1m and poured mercury into it. He used this method to avoid the formation of any air bubbles inside or in other words, it was not to create any void inside the tube. He removed the glass funnel after pouring the mercury, and then closed one end of the barometric tube with his finger, inverted it to make the open end at the bottom and the tube was inserted into a vessel containing mercury carefully without forming any air bubbles. He found that the mercury in the 100cm tube dropped to 76cm. He did the same experiment with water. But that required a long tube. Water has a density 136 times less than that of mercury, and this experiment returned the water column at a height of 103m. This means that the height of the water column = the height of the mercury column (76cm) X relative density of water with respect to mercury (136).