How we make a Vacuum and who did it first.
One place you would not want to be is in a Vacuum. It is a pretty dull place, there is no atmosphere for a start! A Vacuum is not able to support life, or at least none that we would recognise. Basically, it is a space with nothing in it. There is no matter, like air or carbon, and the pressures that create this matter are so low they aren’t worth mentioning. We can make a vacuum quite easily. All we need is a pump to remove the air from an enclosed space. There are practical uses to doing this.
A vacuum creates space that can move items. We use devices like a vacuum conveyor. Examples of this can be had from www.aptech.uk.com/pneumatic-conveying-systems/vacuum-conveying/. Small items like pills for pain relief, animal feed or even money in plastic pods in supermarkets are moved in this way.
In ancient times the Philosophers of Greece were very concerned about the vacuum. However, they didn’t believe that there could be a state of absolute nothing and they would debate the possibility endlessly. They were sort of right, there are trace elements of gases in a vacuum but not enough to make much of a difference. Daniel Bernouli is the first scientist to actually try and illustrate what a vacuum can do. In 1738 he demonstrated this with tubes and fluid. In simple terms he said that if you stick a sealed glass rod in water, the water will slowly creep up the tube over time. The thinner the tube the higher it goes.
