Blaise Pascal
Ida Jarmoszewicz 7a
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Blaise Pascal- (19 june 1623 - 19 august 1662)
was a French mathematician, physicist,
inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He
was a child prodigy who was educated by his
father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's
earliest work was in the natural and applied
sciences, where he made important
contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified
the concepts of pressure and vacuum by
generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli.
Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific
method.
EDUCATION
Pascal was an important In 1646, he and his sister
mathematician, helping create two Jacqueline identified with the
major new areas of research: he religious movement within
wrote a significant treatise on the Catholicism known by its detractors
subject of projective geometry at the as [Link] a religious
experience in late 1654, he began
age of 16, and later corresponded
writing influential works on
with Pierre de Fermat on probability philosophy and theology. His two
theory, strongly influencing the most famous works date from this
development of modern economics period: the Lettres provinciales and
and social science. Following Galileo the Pensées, the former set in the
conflict between Jansenists and
Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he
Jesuits. In that year, he also wrote
rebutted Aristotle's followers who an important treatise on the
insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. arithmetical triangle. Between 1658
Pascal's results caused many and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid
disputes before being accepted. and its use in calculating the volume
of solids.
PASCAL’S TRIANGLE
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle arithmétique
("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1654 described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial
coefficients, now called Pascal's triangle.
In Pascal's triangle, each number is the sum of the two numbers
directly above it.
THEORY OF PROBABILITIES
In 1654, prompted by his friend the Chevalier de Méré,
he corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on the subject of
gambling problems, and from that collaboration was
born the mathematical theory of [Link]
specific problem was that of two players who want to
finish a game early and, given the current circumstances
of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on
the chance each has of winning the game from that
point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value
was introduced. Pascal later (in the Pensées) used a
probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in
God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and
Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important
groundwork for Leibniz' formulation of the calculus.
HYDRODYNAMICS AND HYDROSTATICS
Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic
fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. He
proved that hydrostatic pressure depends not on the weight of the fluid but on the elevation difference. He
demonstrated this principle by attaching a thin tube to a barrel full of water and filling the tube with water up to the
level of the third floor of a building. This caused the barrel to leak, in what became known as Pascal's barrel
experiment.
BAROMETRIC EXPERIMENTS
By 1647, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having
replicated an experiment that involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of
mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the
mercury in the tube.
IS THERE NO VACUUM?
At the time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter was present.
This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of substance, whether visible or
invisible; and that this substance was forever in motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must
be moved by something," Aristotle [Link], to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's
time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:
● Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in
the glass tube.
● Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must
be moved by something.
● Therefore, since there had to be an invisible
"something" to move the light through the glass
tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the
glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuums – the
absence of any and everything – were simply an
impossibility.
,,NEW EXPERIMENTS WITH THE VACUUM”
Following more experimentation in this vein, in
1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles
touchant le vide ("New experiments with the
vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to
what degree various liquids could be supported by
air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was
indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a
barometer tube. This work was followed by Récit
de la grande expérience de l'équilibre des liqueurs
("Account of the great experiment on equilibrium in
liquids") published in 1648.
TWO APPROACHES TO PROVING THE THESIS
The Torricellian vacuum found that air pressure is equal to the
weight of 30 inches of mercury. If air has a finite weight, Earth's
atmosphere must have a maximum height. Pascal reasoned that if
true, air pressure on a high mountain must be less than at a lower
altitude. He lived near the Puy de Dôme mountain, 4,790 feet
(1,460 m) tall, but his health was poor so could not climb it. On 19
September 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but
insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister
Gilberte, was finally able to carry out the fact-finding mission vital
to Pascal's theory.
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up
to the top of the bell tower at the church of
Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about 50 metres. The
mercury dropped two lines.
PASCAL LAW
Pascal's law describes the behaviour of fluids when they are subject to external pressure. It can be
formulated as follows: The pressure that is exerted from the outside on a liquid or gas is distributed
equally in all directions.
Examples of application of Pascal's law
● pumping an inner tube, mattress, brake systems, blowing balloons, air hammer, operation of
pneumatic equipment (air press)
● operation of hydraulic equipment (brake system, hydraulic jack, hydraulic press, hydraulic pump)
The name of the pressure unit comes
from Blaise's name.
❏ Pascal[Pa]
❏ 1 hektopascal[hPa]=100Pa
❏ 1 kilopascal[kPa]=1000Pa
❏ 1 megapascal[MPa]=1 000 000
Pa
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