The frog thermometer or - as the Cimento academicians defined it, the botticino [small-toad] thermometer - contained small glass spheres of different density, which were immersed in alcohol. The device was used as a clinical thermometer, tied to the wrist or the arm of the patient with the head of the frog facing upward. The variations in body temperature were registered by the movement of the spheres. The rise in temperature causes an increase in the volume of the alcohol, reflected in the movement of the small spheres (first the less dense, then the more dense). Because of the spheres' sluggish motion, this thermometer was also called infingardo [slothful, slow]. The invention of this model is attributed to Ferdinand II de' Medici.[1][2][3]
See also
edit- Galileo thermometer – Thermometer containing several glass vessels of varying density
References
edit- ^ Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza (Firenze), Museo di storia della scienza: catalogo, a cura di Mara Miniati, Firenze, Giunti, 1991, p. 138, scheda n. 11, ISBN 88-09-20036-5.
- ^ Emilio Borchi e Renzo Macii, La nascita del termometro a liquido, in Termometri & termoscopi, Firenze, Osservatorio Ximeniano, 1997, pp. 41-66.
- ^ Mara Miniati, Bocciuoli, palle d'oncia e termometri gelosissimi: vetro e scienza nell'Accademia del Cimento, in Scienziati a corte: l'arte della sperimentazione nell'Accademia Galileiana del Cimento, 1657-1667, Livorno, Sillabe, 2001, pp. 36-42.