Blaise Pascal · Mathematics
Pascal the physicist and engineer: the <em>Pascaline</em> calculating machine; the great Puy-de-Dôme experiment proving that the air has weight and that the vacuum can exist, against the ancient dogma that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’; and Pascal’s law of pressure in fluids.
You learned that Pascal built the Pascaline, that the Puy-de-Dôme experiment showed the mercury column falls at altitude because the air has weight (not because nature abhors a vacuum), and that Pascal’s law states pressure in a confined fluid spreads undiminished in every direction. Explain these ideas an…
Leads to René Descartes.
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