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What happens if you use water instead of mercury in determination of atmospheric pressure?
Wiki User
∙ 14y ago
I'm not sure if this answer is the kind of answer you're looking for, but basically, you would have to use a much larger amount of water than Mercury to get an accurate reading of atmospheric pressure. This is because water is not nearly as dense as mercury, so it takes much less atmospheric pressure to raise the water up the tube in a water barometer. This results in water rising much more easily than mercury. Obviously, then, a water barometer would have to be much larger than a mercury one. Since mercury is more dense than water, mercury barometers are much smaller. So, if you put water in a mercury barometer instead of mercury, the reading you get would be way too high.
Air pressure at sea level is about 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) and can push a column of water almost 33 feet high, but it can only push mercury 30 inches high. Roughly, ever inch of mercury equals a foot of water.
Wiki User
∙ 14y ago
Wiki User
∙ 13y agoBecause mercury is more reactive to temperature changes than water. Using water in a barometer is possible, but changes in temperature would be far less visible to the naked eye, which also makes readings harder and less accurate.
Wiki User
∙ 8y agoThe short answer is that we can. However it's not really practical to do so, as the glass tube would have to be over 22 feet high! When we use a liquid in glass thermometer, we compare air pressures by the height of the column of liquid that can be supported. Mercury is a very dense liquid, and a standard atmosphere will support only 760 mm of it. Water is much less dense so the same pressure of air can support much more. (Mercury is 13.56 times more dense than water.)
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