This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Réaumur scale is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| from Réaumur | to Réaumur | |
|---|---|---|
| Celsius | [°C] = [°Ré] × 5⁄4 | [°Ré] = [°C] × 4⁄5 |
| Fahrenheit | [°F] = [°Ré] × 9⁄4 + 32 | [°Ré] = ([°F] − 32) × 4⁄9 |
| Kelvin | [K] = [°Ré] × 5⁄4 + 273.15 | [°Ré] = ([K] − 273.15) × 4⁄5 |
| Rankine | [°R] = [°Ré] × 9⁄4 + 491.67 | [°Ré] = ([°R] − 491.67) × 4⁄9 |
| For temperature intervals rather than specific temperatures, 1 °Ré = 1.25 °C = 2.25 °F Comparisons among various temperature scales |
||
The Réaumur scale (°Ré, °Re, °R), also known as the "octogesimal division"1, is a temperature scale in which the freezing and boiling points of water are set to 0 and 80 degrees respectively. The scale is named after René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, who first proposed it in 1730.2
Réaumur’s thermometer was constructed on the principle of taking the freezing point of water as 0°, and graduating the tube into degrees each of which was one-thousandth of the volume contained by the bulb and tube up to the zero mark. It was the dilatability of the particular quality of alcohol employed which made the boiling point of water 80°.citation needed Mercurial thermometers, the stems of which are graduated into eighty equal parts between the freezing and boiling points of water, are not Réaumur thermometers in anything but name. Réaumur may have chosen the octogesimal division because the number 80 could be halved 4 times and still be an integer (40, 20, 10, 5);citation needed the number 100, for instance, could only suffer this process twice (50, 25).
Use
The Réaumur scale saw widespread use in Europe, particularly in France and Germany as well as Russia, as referenced in works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Nabokov.3citation needed But by the 1790s, France chose the Celsius scale for the metric system over the Réaumur measurements.2 Today it is only of historical significance except that it is still used in the measuring of milk temperature in cheese. It is used in some Italian dairies making Parmigiano-Reggiano and Grana Padano cheeses and in Swiss Alp cheeses.citation needed
References
- ^ Division octogesimale in French.
- ^ a b Simons, Paul (17 October 2007). "How Reaumur fell off the temperature scale", The Times. Retrieved on 10 March 2008.
- ^ Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, p. 1. Penguin Books.
|
||||||||
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 17 November 2008, at 16:06.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Réaumur scale".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.