![]() ![]() By heating an amount of distilled water in a sealed container over 100 days, he found that the weight of the container had not changed. ![]() To better understand the process, he created an experiment to learn more. ![]() ![]() Since the most widely accepted theories of the time said that when water was heated some of it turned into “earth”, measuring its density would clearly be confusing and the results questionable. At the time, there was no effective method for measuring the quality of water chemically, so he had to rely on measuring the density, a physical measure. Lavoisier was concerned with improving the lives of the public, and the origin of his discoveries about elements began with a project in 1768 to improve the supply of good drinking water in French cities. And so firm was the belief in phlogiston that when a gain in weight was recorded, it was explained away – for example, by saying that the phlogiston was an incorporeal, ethereal fire that was lighter than any other known substance and buoyed up heavier ones, or even a substance with negative weight.īefore Lavoisier published his Traité, aided by his wife Marie-Anne-Pierette who learned English to help him translate the growing body of scientific research, helped him with experiments and drew all the diagrams , phlogiston theory was accepted as fact by the leading chemists of 18th Century Europe and the “four element” theory of the elements was mostly accepted (or not denied) by most chemists.īuilding off the work of Anglo-Irish natural philosopher Robert Boyle who in the 17th Century defined an element as “a substance that cannot be decomposed into any simpler substance,” Lavoisier revived this definition and proved its accuracy through extensive and rigorous experimentation. Because balances were inaccurate, the fact that substances often gained weight when they burnt was often missed. The essence of it was that combustible substances contain a curious substance called phlogiston, which they lose when they burn. The theory, and the name phlogiston, was coined in 1718 by Georg Stahl, a Bavarian professor of medicine. Lavoisier’s most notable book Traité élémentaire de chimie, published in 1789 by the elite French Academy of Sciences, could be considered the first modern chemistry textbook and contained theories about the nature of elements which replaced the “phlogiston theory,” the belief that there was a “fire element” was contained within all combustible objects which was released in the form of fire, heat and light when an object burned.Īt the time, the development of chemistry was being held back by this widespread and erroneous belief. His new structure of chemistry, which understood the constituent parts of air and the process of combustion more clearly, set chemistry on a modern road and laid the groundwork for Dmitri Mendeleev‘s work and the creation of the periodic table. Lavoisier’s work overturned centuries of incorrect thinking about the nature of elements and compounds. French aristocrat and chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was an incredibly important figure in the history of chemistry, whose findings were equivalent in stature to the impact of Isaac Newton‘s discoveries on physics. ![]()
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