Gay-Lussac in a daring 1804 balloon ascent to investigate terrestrial magnetism and the composition of air at high altitude. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) was a French chemist and physicist known for his studies on the physical properties of gases. His first major investigation concerned the thermal expansion of gases. He showed that a common thermal-expansion coefficient applied to all gases. This was significant in the establishment of the Kelvin temperature scale later in the century. 1804, Gay-Lussac and Jean-Baptiste Biot ascended to a height of approximately 13, 000 feet to study variations in the Earth's electro-magnetic intensity relative to altitude. In a later solo ascent, he climbed to 23, 000 feet (a record held for fifty years) and experienced the effects of oxygen deprivation but still managed to collect air samples, study the variation of pressure and temperature, and repeat his earlier electro-magnetic observations. In 1805, he | |
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Credit: | Science Photo Library / Science Source |
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