ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Bert Bolle Barometer

Okay, so imagine you have a straw. When you suck in the air through the straw, the pressure inside the straw reduces and that causes a drop in the depth of the liquid inside the straw. A Bert Bolle barometer is like a super huge straw that measures the atmospheric pressure outside.

You know how sometimes it's very windy outside or the weather suddenly gets very cloudy or rainy? These changes can cause variations in the air pressure that are hard for us humans to notice. However, a Bert Bolle barometer can detect these changes because it has a special liquid inside it, which rises or falls depending on how much pressure is being exerted on it from the atmosphere.

The barometer is made up of a big glass tube that has one end open and the other end is sealed off. The tube is filled with a liquid like mercury, which is very dense and heavy. On top of the liquid, there is an air chamber with a very small hole on top. When the atmospheric pressure outside is higher than the pressure inside, it pushes the liquid up into the air chamber, making the air inside the chamber more compressed. This raises the pressure in the chamber, which forces some of the liquid back down the tube.

On the other hand, when the atmospheric pressure outside is lower than the pressure in the chamber, it allows air to escape from the chamber and bubbles up through the liquid in the tube, making the liquid level inside the tube fall. This indicates that the air pressure is low outside.

So, a Bert Bolle barometer is like a straw that can measure how much the atmosphere is pushing and pulling, and help us predict changes in the weather. It is designed to measure the atmospheric pressure, which is one of the factors that affect our daily weather.