Anders Celsius Facts
Anders Celsius Facts
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| Interesting Anders Celsius Facts: |
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| Celsius came from a long line of scientists and mathematicians, including his father and both of his grandfathers, which led him to develop his own interest in science and math. |
| He studied at Uppsala University (Sweden), where his father was a professor, and eventually went on to become an astronomy professor there. |
| One of his first great published works was his article outlining his work on measuring the distance from the Earth to the sun, entitled, "Nova Methodus distantiam solis a terra determinandi (New Method for Determining the Distance from the Earth to the Sun)". |
| Celsius also conducted groundbreaking and important work in studying the aurora borealis, and was the first to hypothesize that the phenomenon was connected to the magnetic fields of the planet. |
| He spent the 1730s engaged in an important undertaking to measure the latitudes of one meridian. Through his collaboration with mathematicians and an actual expedition along one meridian, he and the others were able to not only measure the distance of one latitude, but also to prove Isaac Newton's theory that the Earth is not a sphere, but an ellipsoid. |
| He published his findings on how to measure the shape of the Earth, and this work earned him a great deal of respect both in the scientific community and governments. |
| Due to this appreciation of his work, Celsius was successful in petitioning for the funding to build an observatory in Uppsala. |
| Thanks to his observatory, he was able to conduct experiments using colored glass that helped him establish the magnitude of brightness of other stars. |
| Interestingly, it is his work on establishing a set of standards for determining temperature that he is most widely known for. |
| This set of standards allowed scientists all over the world to conduct uniform and repeatable experiments, leading it to be one of the most important scientific discoveries in history. |
| Celsius conducted other research based on his accurate geographical measurements of Sweden that proved the land was gradually rising above sea level. |
| However, Celsius hypothesized that this was due to evaporation, and now we know it is actually a phenomenon called post-glacial rebound in which the thick ice that covered much of the northern regions during the last ice age is melting, and is no longer pressing down on the Earth's crust in those regions. |
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