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Robert Hooke’s interests extended far beyond optics, astronomy and mechanics to studies in the structure of matter, earthquakes, and the physics of spring mechanisms.
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| Hooke's Law: Excerpt from the historic experimental setup. | Graph of a measurement (school physics). |
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In 1658, working as Robert Boyle’s assistant, he built an improved airpump and invented the spring control of the balance wheel in watches. In 1664 he set the thermo-metrical zero at the freezing point of water and examined the relationship between barometer readings and changes in the weather. He turned meteorology into a science and realized the importance of fossils in their role as witnesses of the earth’s history.
In 1666 he introduced the ”level” for the horizontal setting of optical axes. In 1668 he discovered the constancy of the boiling and melting points of pure materials. He was also the first to realize that a substance in every state of aggregation contracts in the cold and expands when it heats again. Among Hooke’s contributions are the exact formulation of the theory of elasticity in 1678 (Hooke’s Law) and treatises on the kinetic hypothesis of gases and the nature of combustion. He described breathing as the chemical influence of air on blood.
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