The thunder house is a scientific model invented by James Lind which gives a spectacular demonstration of the destructive effect of a lightning bolt striking a house with an imperfect lightning conductor.
The small wooden house has hinged walls and carries a brass rod representing a lightning rod. A section of the conductor runs along a piece of wood placed on the façade. Inside the house is a spark gap housed in a small brass cylinder containing a small quantity of gunpowder.
When the piece of wood is removed, the lightning-conductor circuit is broken. The lightning bolt, simulated by a spark generated by a Leyden jar, ignites the powder, whose explosion causes the house to collapse. If, instead, the piece of wood is positioned correctly, the electricity will be discharged to the ground, leaving the house intact. Filippo Lucci depicted a similar device in the Stanzino of the Matematiche of the Uffizi Gallery in 1780—clear evidence of the popularity of such demonstrations in the late eighteenth century. The same phenomenon is also visible through the use of a similar instrument called Thunder Obelisk.[1]
Miniati, Mara, ed. (1991). Museo di storia della scienza: catalogo (in Italian). Firenze: Giunti. p.248, board n. 50. ISBN88-09-20036-5.
Willem D. Hackmann, ed. (1995). Catalogue of pneumatical, magnetical and electrical instruments (in Italian). Firenze: Giunti. p.140, board n. 163. ISBN88-09-20732-7.
Museo Galileo is located in Florence, Italy, in Piazza dei Giudici, along the River Arno and close to the Uffizi Gallery. The museum, dedicated to astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei, is housed in Palazzo Castellani, an 11th-century building which was then known as the Castello d'Altafronte.
The Villa del Trebbio is a Medici villa in Tuscany, Italy.
Franklin bells are an early demonstration of electric charge designed to work with a Leyden jar or a Lightning rod. Franklin bells are only a qualitative indicator of electric charge and were used for simple demonstrations rather than research. The bells are an adaptation to the first device that converted electrical energy into mechanical energy in the form of continuous mechanical motion, in this case, the moving of a bell clapper back and forth between two oppositely charged bells.
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder, also known as Portrait of a Youth with a Medal, is a tempera painting by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. The painting features a young man displaying in triangled hands a medal stamped with the likeness of Cosimo de' Medici. The identity of the young man has been a long-enduring mystery. Completed in approximately 1475, it is on display in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.
Madonna with Child is a tempera painting by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, dating to c. 1467 and housed in the Musée du Petit Palais of Avignon, France.
The French Union of Modern Artists was a movement made up of decorative artists and architects founded in France on 15 May 1929 and active until 1959.
Alessandro Vezzosi is an Italian art critic, Leonardo scholar, artist, expert on interdisciplinary studies and creative museology, he is also the author of hundreds of exhibits, publications and conferences, in Italy and abroad on Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, contemporary art and design. Amongst others, he was the first scholar from the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies from the University of California in Los Angeles (1981), directed by Carlo Pedretti; he taught at the University of Progetto in Reggio Emilia; and he is honorary professor at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence. He began as an artist from 1964 to 1971 winning more than 80 prizes in painting competitions. In the Seventies he was the founder of the "Archivio Leonardisimi" and of Strumenti-Memoria del Territorio; he coordinated "ArteCronaca", he was the historical-artistic consultant of the Municipality of Vinci and he collaborated on the publications on Tuscany and Leonardo, modern and contemporary art. In 1980 he curated the Centro di Documentazione Arti Visive of the Municipality of Florence.
The writing hand is a mechanical automaton created by Friedrich von Knauss in 1764. A clockwork mechanism moves a hand which dips a pen into an inkstand and writes the phrase "Huic Domui Deus / Nec metas rerum / Nec tempora ponat" on a small card. On the silver-coating of the mechanism are the words "Pro patria".
The jovilabe is a brass scientific instrument, undated and of unknown maker, currently in the collection of the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy.
Galileo's objective lens is a specific objective lens held in the Museo Galileo, Florence, Italy. It was used by Galileo Galilei in the Galilean telescope with which he discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610. The lens has a diameter of 38mm and a gilt brass housing. The frame is made of ebony and ivory and has dimensions of 410mm x 300mm.
The Campani compound microscope is a microscope on exhibit at the Museo Galileo in Italy, thought to have been built by optical instrument maker Giuseppe Campani in the second half 17th century. For a time it was thought to have been built by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei but no longer bares that attribution.
The Quadrans Vetus is a medieval astronomical instrument.
The Instrument of the Primum Mobile is also called the quadrant of Petrus Apianus, because he invented it and described it in the treatise Instrumentum primi mobilis. The instrument is used to find sines and cosines. It bears the initials "F.E.D.P.F." [Frater Egnatius Dantis Predicatorum Fecit]. Ignazio Danti dedicated it to Cosimo I de' Medici, as attested by the Medici coat of arms engraved on the front. The instrument was depicted on the ceiling of the Stanzino delle Matematiche in the Uffizi Gallery.
The Tabula Affinitatum is a table of chemical affinities between substances.
The tall-stem thermometers are a kind of thermometer, resting on branched feet.
The luminous discharge tube is part of an electric machine.
The elastic and inelastic collisions apparatus is a large apparatus to study elastic and inelastic collisions.
The mechanical paradox is an apparatus for studying physical paradoxes. It consists of a trapezoidal veneered wooden frame with two brass rails, and a pair of brass cones joined at their bases by a wooden disk which rests on the rails. When the double cone is placed at the low end of the frame, it automatically starts to roll upward, giving the impression of escaping the universal law of the gravitational force.
The Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale was an Italian museum founded on 22 February 1775 in Florence that survived until 1878, when its collections were split up in various Florentine museums.
The Virgin Reliquaries are four 1434 panel paintings by Fra Giovanni Masi after drawings by Fra Angelico, intended as tabernacle-reliquaries for the Convent of Santa Maria Novella. One is in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston whilst the rest are in the Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
