Hippolyte fizeau biography for kids
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Armand Fizeau was born in Paris on this day, 23rd September 1819, and was to become one of the foremost physicists of his time. Following in his father’s footsteps, he initially studied medicine, but eventually ended up in the Paris Observatory and the College de France – a centre of innovative research since the sixteenth century.
In 1849 Fizeau became the first person to accurately measure the speed of light across the surface of the Earth – shining a beam of light through the teeth on the edge of a rotating wheel to reflect off a mirror placed 8 km away (on top of the hill of Montmartre) such that the distance moved by the wheel in the time taken for the light to return could be used to calculate the light’s speed. Fizeau also discovered that light travels faster in air than in water, which added weight to the theory that light travels as a wave rather than as little ‘corpuscles’. Working with Foucalt (of “Foucault’s pendulum
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Scientist of the Day - Hippolyte Fizeau
Hippolyte Fizeau, a French physicist, was born Sep. 23, 1819. Fizeau was a master at designing experiments, most of them centered around light. He was exposed to photography almost from the moment that Louis Daguerre's discovery was announced by François Arago to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839, and Fizeau undertook his own investigations into how to reduce exposure time, which was around 30 minutes at the time, at which he was successful. In 1845, he and his friend Leon Foucault took a photograph of the Sun, the very first photograph ever taken of the Sun, which showed fields of sunspots quite clearly (the link is to the actual 1845 photograph).
Arago, the secretary of the French academy, who seems to have spent much of his life twisting people's arms, and who had asked Foucault and Fizeau to try to photograph the Sun, asked Fizeau to have a go at measuring the speed of light. Ole Rømer, long before (1676), had measured
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Hippolyte Fizeau facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hippolyte Fizeau | |
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Hippolyte Fizeau in 1883 by Eugène Pirou | |
| Born | 23 September 1819 Paris, France |
| Died | 18 September 1896 (aged 76) Venteuil, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Fizeau experiment Fizeau interferometer Fizeau wheel Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in air Doppler–Fizeau effect Astronomical interferometry Capacitor Optical dilatometer Redshift |
| Awards | Rumford Medal(1866) FRS(1875) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
Armand Hippolyte Louis FizeauFRS FRSE MIF (French pronunciation: [aʁmɑ̃ ipɔlit lwi fizo]; 23 September 1819 – 18 September 1896) was a French physicist, who in 1849 measured the speed of light to within 5% accuracy. In 1851, he measured the speed of light in moving water in an experiment known as the Fizeau experiment.
Biography
Fizeau was born in Paris to Louis and Beatrice Fizeau. He married into the dem Jussieu botanical family. His earliest