Two years later, pursuing a suggestion by Galileo, he filled a glass tube 4 feet (1.2 m) long with mercury and inverted the tube into a dish. He observed that some of the mercury did not flow out and that the space above the mercury in the tube was a vacuum. Torricelli became the first man to create a sustained vacuum. After much observation, he concluded that the variation of the height of the mercury from day to day was caused by changes in atmospheric pressure. He never published his findings, however, because he was too deeply involved in the study of pure mathematics—including calculations of the cycloid, a geometric curve described by a point on the rim of a turning wheel. In his Opera Geometrica (1644; “Geometric Works”), Torricelli included his findings on fluid motion and projectile motion.