{"id":16619,"date":"2022-03-08T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T21:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/education.australiascience.tv\/?p=16619"},"modified":"2022-03-07T23:13:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-07T12:43:46","slug":"eunice-newton-footes-long-forgotten-climate-science-discovery","status":"publish","type":[8014,8015,8016,8018,8019],"link":"https:\/\/education.australiascience.tv\/eunice-newton-footes-long-forgotten-climate-science-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Eunice Newton Foote\u2019s long-forgotten climate-science discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern”][vc_column width=”5\/6″][vc_separator color=”white”][vc_column_text]Women\u2019s rights campaigner was the first to hypothesise that CO2<\/sub> concentrations in the atmosphere would change temperature.<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Today, 08 March, is International Day of Women 2022, a perfect day to explore the long-overlooked but ground-breaking climate discovery of female scientist Eunice Newton Foote.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]This resource is best suited to Years 8 and 10 students studying Earth and Space, and Physical sciences with a particular emphasis on climate change. The additional video resource is ideal for discussing the history of gender bias in STEM.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n
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Credit Carlyn Iverson\/NOAA Climate.gov<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Born as Eunice Newton on 17 July 1819 in Goshen, Connecticut, Foote was an American amateur scientist, inventor, and women\u2019s rights campaigner, but for far too long her contribution to climate science had been lost to history.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Foote was the first to propose the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming<\/a> by theorising that changing the concentration of CO2<\/sub> in the atmosphere would in turn change atmospheric temperature, and thus the climate. She did so three years before John Tyndall<\/a> proved the physics behind the connection between atmospheric CO2<\/sub> and the greenhouse effect.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Explained in her short paper published in 1856, Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun\u2019s Rays<\/em>, her experiment used two glass tubes of the same size in which she placed a thermometer to measure their temperatures. Filling the tubes with oxygen gas, dry or damp air, or carbonic acid gas (the term back then for carbon dioxide), she also used an air pump to remove the gas from one and to compress it within the other.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]She then left the tubes either in full sun or in the shade and measured their temperature change over time, finding that the tubes containing water vapour (damp air) and CO2<\/sub> rose in temperature more than those containing normal air, and took much longer to cool back down.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Although her experimental design<\/a> did have many limitations, the results of her experiment allowed Foote to correctly infer the relationship between the concentration of CO2<\/sub> in the atmosphere and the temperature of the planet.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\n
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\u201cCircumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun\u2019s Rays\u201d by Eunice Newton Foote, published in the American Journal of Science and Arts (1856).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\u201cAn atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature,\u201d she wrote, \u201cand if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action as well as from increased weight must have necessarily resulted.\u201d[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]When Foote carried out her experiment in the 1850s, CO2<\/sub> levels in the atmosphere were about 190 parts per million (ppm), meaning that for every million air particles, 190 of them were CO2<\/sub>. Today, atmospheric CO2<\/sub> concentrations have climbed<\/a> to record levels above 400 ppm.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]However, Foote\u2019s experiments were not sophisticated enough to isolate and detect the physics behind the greenhouse effect. In 1859, Irish physicist John Tyndall directly showed the physical basis<\/a> behind the greenhouse effect by demonstrating that some gases \u2013 such as CO2<\/sub>, methane and water vapour \u2013 absorb and radiate longwave infrared (thermal) radiation from the Earth\u2019s surface.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]In 2010, retired petroleum geologist Ray Sorensen came across a summary of Foote\u2019s work published in an 1857 volume of The Annual of Scientific Discovery<\/em>. Even though Foote\u2019s work had gone unrecognised in the scientific community for more than 150 years, the 2011 publication of Sorensen’s findings<\/a> brought belated public recognition.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Originally published by\u00a0Cosmos<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0Eunice Newton Foote\u2019s long-forgotten climate-science discovery.<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”#000000″ type=”normal”][vc_column_text]A short film, Eunice<\/em><\/a>, about her discovery and her fight to be taken seriously as a female scientist, was produced in 2018 and submitted to the year\u2019s SCINEMA International Science Film Festival<\/a>.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]