A MERTON man is counting on nature to obey its own laws when he conducts a public experiment in Devon as part of National Science Week in March.
Because nature abhors a vacuum, Philip Collins, a maker and restorer of barometers, expects to prove that 16 heavy horses cannot pull apart two small metal hemispheres held together by only air pressure.
The experiment is a re-enactment of a demonstration first given in Magdeburg in 1656 by Otto von Guericke, the inventor of the air pump. Von Guericke proved that if air was evacuated from between two sealed hemispheres it would require exceptional force to part them. He later demonstrated this in the presence of Emperor Ferdinand III of Prussia.
The experiment is being funded to the tune of £3,000 by Copus, the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, and will be held on Torrington Commons.
Mr Collins, a Fellow of the Royal Meteorologocal Society, who has a museum housing more than 300 rare and unusual barometers, has been preparing for the event for more than a year.
He has calculated that a force of more than five tons should be needed to separate the hemispheres if an absolute vacuum is achieved.
For effect the experiment will start with only two teams of two horses pulling against each other. Then more horses will be added in pairs at either end. It is not certain that the 16 horses — eight shires and eight Belgian Percherons — will eventually pull the hemispheres apart. They failed in Von Guericke's experiment.
If the horses succeed in breaking the vacuum, safety chains connecting the two hemispheres will prevent them from being pulled more than a few inches apart.
The event will take place next to a replica of Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London is said to have started. The street, being built by Great Torrington Cavaliers, a charitable group, will be set on fire later in the year as part of the Millennium celebrations.