Main Catalogue - VUOTOTECNICA - #7

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6 Magdeburg hemispheres experiment (1654) Gaspar Schott, Mechanicahydraulica-pneumatica, Würzburg (1657) Otto von Guericke’s pneumatic pump Otto von Guericke, Esperimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica De Vacuo Spatio, Amsterdam (1672) Sound in a vacuum Robert Boyle, New experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the spring of the Air and its Effect, Oxford (1660) Boyle’s pneumatic pump in operation Robert Boyle, New experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the spring of the Air and its Effect, Oxford (1660) Robert Boyle (1627 - 1691) In another experiment, conducted the same year, twenty people could not withhold a piston that would withdraw when connected to a chamber in which a vacuum was produced. This was the first example of piston engine. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) improved von Guericke’s vacuum pump and carried out new experiments which he described in his work of 1660: “New experiments physic-mechanicall: Touching the spring of the air and their effects”. Boyle was the first to prove that, on emptying a glass bell jar in which a ringing bell had been placed, the ringing was no longer audible. Other important experiments included those that proved that in a vacuum, smoke goes down, not up and that water boils at room temperature. A few years later, Boyle formulated the gas law bearing his name that describes the inversely proportional relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas due to isothermal transformations.