What if you could prove that something invisible actually has weight and pushes on you right now?

The Day a Brilliant Mathematician Was Born!

Meet the Italian genius who invented a secret code language for math!

Evangelista Torricelli invented the barometer and proved air has weight!

On October 12, 1600, something amazing happened in the city of Florence, Italy. A baby named Evangelista Torricelli was born — and he would grow up to change science forever!

Torricelli was super curious about everything around him. He loved asking questions like, 'Why does air push on things?' and 'Can we measure invisible forces?' Pretty cool questions, right?

Here's where it gets REALLY exciting: Torricelli invented the very first barometer! That's the instrument that tells us what the weather is going to be like. Before Torricelli, people had no idea that air actually has weight and pushes down on us all the time!

Imagine filling a tube with liquid mercury, flipping it upside down in a bowl, and watching the liquid stay up in the tube instead of falling out. That's exactly what Torricelli did! The air pushing on the bowl kept the mercury up. Mind-blowing!

💡 The empty space at the top of Torricelli's barometer tube was the first human-made vacuum ever created — scientists still call it a 'Torricellian vacuum' today!