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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical revolution | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_revolution | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:14:18.347232+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Antoine Lavoisier == The latter stages of the revolution was fuelled by the 1789 publication of Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry). Beginning with this publication and others to follow, Lavoisier synthesised the work of others and coined the term "oxygen". Antoine Lavoisier represented the chemical revolution not only in his publications, but also in the way he practiced chemistry. Lavoisier's work was characterized by his systematic determination of weights and his strong emphasis on precision and accuracy. While it has been postulated that the law of conservation of mass was discovered by Lavoisier, this claim has been refuted by scientist Marcellin Berthelot. Earlier use of the law of conservation of mass has been suggested by Henry Guerlac, noting that scientist Jan Baptist van Helmont had implicitly applied the methodology to his work in the 16th and 17th centuries. Earlier references of the law of conservation of mass and its use were made by Jean Rey in 1630. Although the law of conservation of mass was not explicitly discovered by Lavoisier, his work with a wider array of materials than what most scientists had available at the time allowed his work to greatly expand the boundaries of the principle and its fundamentals. Lavoisier also contributed to chemistry a method of understanding combustion and respiration and proof of the composition of water by decomposition into its constituent parts. He explained the theory of combustion, and challenged the phlogiston theory with his views on caloric. The Traité incorporates notions of a "new chemistry" and describes the experiments and reasoning that led to his conclusions. Like Newton's Principia, which was the high point of the Scientific Revolution, Lavoisier's Traité can be seen as the culmination of the Chemical Revolution. Lavoisier's work was not immediately accepted and it took several decades for it gain momentum. This transition was aided by the work of Jöns Jakob Berzelius, who came up with a simplified shorthand to describe chemical compounds based on John Dalton's theory of atomic weights. Many people credit Lavoisier and his overthrow of phlogiston theory as the traditional chemical revolution, with Lavoisier marking the beginning of the revolution and John Dalton marking its culmination.
=== Méthode de nomenclature chimique === Antoine Lavoisier, in a collaborative effort with Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, published Méthode de nomenclature chimique in 1787. This work established a terminology for the "new chemistry" which Lavoisier was creating, which focused on a standardized set of terms, establishment of new elements, and experimental work. Méthode established 55 elements which were substances that could not be broken down into simpler composite parts at the time of publishing. By introducing new terminology into the field, Lavoisier encouraged other chemists to adopt his theories and practices in order to use his terms and stay current in chemistry.
=== Traité élémentaire de chimie === One of Lavoisier's main influences was Étienne Bonnet, abbé de Condillac. Condillac's approach to scientific research, which was the basis of Lavoisier's approach in Traité, was to demonstrate that human beings could create a mental representation of the world using gathered evidence. In Lavoisier's preface to Traité, he statesIt is a maxim universally admitted in geometry, and indeed in every branch of knowledge, that, in the progress of investigation, we should proceed from known facts to what is unknown. ... In this manner, from a series of sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace back to a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human knowledge.Lavoisier clearly ties his ideas in with those of Condillac, seeking to reform the field of chemistry. His goal in Traité was to associate the field with direct experience and observation, rather than assumption. His work defined a new foundation for the basis of chemical ideas and set a direction for the future course of chemistry.
== Humphry Davy ==
Humphry Davy was an English chemist and a professor of chemistry at the London's Royal Institution in the early 1800s. There he performed experiments that cast doubt upon some of Lavoisier's key ideas such as the acidity of oxygen and the idea of a caloric element. Davy was able to show that acidity was not due to the presence of oxygen using muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) as proof. He also proved that the compound oxymuriatic acid contained no oxygen and was instead an element, which he named chlorine.
Through his use of electric batteries at the Royal Institution Davy first isolated chlorine, followed by the isolation of elemental iodine in 1813. Using the batteries Davy was also able to isolate the elements sodium and potassium. From these experiments Davy concluded that the forces that join chemical elements together must be electrical in nature. Davy also opposed the idea that caloric was an immaterial fluid, arguing instead that heat was a type of motion.