Foote: Forgotten in Weart’s article

• Nicolle E. B. Zellner ^[1]
  1. [1] Albion College

     Albion College

     City of Albion, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 9, 2024, págs. 708-708
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • n what I presume to be an otherwise historically accurate report of the simple models of global warming based on the history of science,1 the article by Spencer Weart does not give due credit to Eunice Newton Foote (1819–1888), who described in 1856—a few years before Tyndall did the same—how tubes of gas heated when exposed to sunlight. In her American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting presentation, Foote reported on results of experiments that investigated how tubes of different gases, including oxygen, air, and hydrogen, were warmed when exposed to sunlight. In her observations of CO2, Foote stated, “The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in carbonic acid [CO2] gas,” with the further speculation that “an atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature.”