chemistry

History

The history of chemistry begins with Robert Boyle, who published The Sceptical Chemist in 1661 (Zumdahl, 2009).

Gerg Stahl (1660-1734) invented phlogiston to explain combustion.

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) determined that chemical reactions neither created nor destroyed mass–the law of conservation of mass.

Joseph Proust (1754-1826) showed that chemical compounds always contain exactly the same proportions of elements by mass. This was called Proust's law, later known as the law of definite proportion.

John Dalton (1766-1844) found that when two elements for a series of compounds, the ratios of the mass of one element that combine with a fixed mass of the other can be reduced to small whole numbers. This is the law of multiple proportions.

Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856) conjectured that different gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of particles in a fixed volume, which is called Avogadro's hypothesis.

Given that Avogadro's hypothesis is true, it is possible to determine the relative masses of individual molecules of each element by measuring the mass of a particular volume of that gas with fixed temperature and pressure. Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826-1910) determined the relative masses of many compounds.

Bibliography