In Search of Eunice Newton Foote - Part 1

Eunice Newton Foote was born on July 17, 1819, in the house of a successful farmer in the town of Connecticut, America. Eunice had five other brothers and one sister. She began his studies at the age of seventeen or eighteen, at Troy Female Seminary, where she found a remarkable man as a teacher. He was Amos Eaton. Famous American botanist, advocate of modern science education and enthusiastic about women's education.

Ukipidia_{Troy Female Seminary}

As a student, she was approved to study chemistry and biology in a local college. The world of knowledge opened up before her, she was greatly influenced by reading books on botany. At the age of twenty-two, she married Elisha Foote, a mathematician and inventor of scientific instruments.

Ukipidia_{Rensselaer School-1824}

Even though she could not go far in science education in a traditional way, she was doing many kinds of scientific experiments in her own home. In 1955, she arranged her test method at home with very few materials. In two glass cylinders four inches in diameter and thirty inches long, mercury thermometers and different living things were placed in direct sunlight or in the shade and tested successively. As the air density increases, the heat absorption capacity of the atmosphere increases, and the water vapor-rich air has a greater heat retention capacity than dry air.

Ukipidia_{Eunice Foote-Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays(1856)}

With a real example, she said, in this way, the temperature of the atmosphere is low because the density of air above the mountain is low. She explained why it is hotter on cloudy days before rain.

But the most important experiment was the heating of various gases in sunlight. Oxygen, hydrogen, water vapor and carbon dioxide, compared between these species, showed that the first two has a very low heat absorption capacity, while water has a slightly higher absorption capacity and carbon dioxide vapor has the highest absorption capacity, for this cylinder temperature raised upto 125 degrees Fahrenheit.

From the results of the experiment, Eunice was able to explain, when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changes, the temperature of the atmosphere also changes. Perhaps, at some point in the distant past, the temperature of these gases increased in large quantities.

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