Chemical Revolution - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The chemical revolution, also called the first chemical revolution, denotes the reformulation of chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

based on the Law of Conservation of Matter and the oxygen theory of combustion. It was centered on the work of French chemist Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier , the "father of modern chemistry", was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology...

(the "father of modern chemistry"). On February 20, 1773, Lavoisier wrote: "the importance of the end in view prompted me to undertake all this work, which seemed to me destined to bring about a revolution in . . . chemistry. An immense series of experiments remains to be made." When he wrote these words in his laboratory notebook, he stood poised to change forever the practice and concepts of chemistry.

Several factors led to this revolution, such as the experiment

Experiment

An experiment is a methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results...

s by Henry Cavendish

Henry Cavendish

Henry Cavendish FRS was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper "On Factitious Airs". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and...

and Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

that proved air was not an element

Chemical element

A chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...

but was composed of several different gas

Gas

Gas is one of the three classical states of matter . Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons...

es. Lavoisier also translated chemistry's archaic and technical jargon into language more accessible to the largely uneducated masses. This led to increased public interest in learning and practicing chemistry. When describing the task of reinventing chemical nomenclature, Lavoisier states:
The revolution started with the 1789 publication of Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie
Traité Élémentaire de Chimie
Traité élémentaire de chimie is an influential textbook written by Antoine Lavoisier published in 1789 and translated into English by Robert Kerr in 1790.The book is considered to be the first modern chemical textbook...

(Elements of Chemistry). Beginning with this publication and others to follow, Lavoisier discovered the composition of air and water and coined the term "oxygen". He also explained the theory of combustion, and did away with the phlogiston theory

Phlogiston theory

The phlogiston theory , first stated in 1667 by Johann Joachim Becher, is an obsolete scientific theory that postulated the existence of a fire-like element called "phlogiston", which was contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion...

with his views on caloric. The Traité incorporates notions of a "new chemistry" and describes the experiments and reasoning that led to Lavoisier's conclusions. In sum, Lavoisier's Traité did for chemistry what Newton's Principia did for physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

.

Additionally, Lavoisier’s contemporary Jöns Jakob Berzelius

Jöns Jakob Berzelius

Jöns Jacob Berzelius was a Swedish chemist. He worked out the modern technique of chemical formula notation, and is together with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle considered a father of modern chemistry...

came up with a simplified shorthand to describe chemical compounds based on John Dalton

John Dalton

John Dalton FRS was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness .-Early life:John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, Cumberland,...

's theory of atomic weights. During the chemical revolution, modern chemists disproved hypotheses that had been proffered by the ancient Greeks and accepted ever since. For example, chemists began to assert that all structures were composed of more than the four elements

Classical element

Many philosophies and worldviews have a set of classical elements believed to reflect the simplest essential parts and principles of which anything consists or upon which the constitution and fundamental powers of anything are based. Most frequently, classical elements refer to ancient beliefs...

of the Greeks or the eight elements of the medieval alchemists. The English alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

, Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

, laid the foundations for the Chemical Revolution, with his mechanical

Mechanism (philosophy)

Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...

corpuscular philosophy, which in turn relied heavily on the alchemical corpuscular theory

Corpuscularianism

Corpuscularianism is a physical theory that supposed all matter to be composed of minute particles, which became important in the Seventeenth century. Among the leading corpuscularians were Rene Descartes, Robert Boyle, and John Locke....

and experimental method

Scientific method

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...

dating back to pseudo-Geber

Pseudo-Geber

Pseudo-Geber is the name assigned by modern scholars to an anonymous European alchemist born in the 13th century, sometimes identified with Paul of Taranto, who wrote books on alchemy and metallurgy, in Latin, under the pen name of "Geber". "Geber" is the shortened and Latinised form of the name...

External links

Chemistry :: The Chemical Revolution – Encyclopedia Britannica
A bibliography on the Chemical Revolution – University of Valencia

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Further reading

External links