Lavoisier

Development of the Periodic Chart

Lavoisier

For 101 days beginning October 1768 Antoine Lavoisier (born Paris, 1743, died 1794) distilled and condensed water in a sealled container. Its weight remained unchanged. Water is inconvertable!

In 1771 at age 28, Antoine Lavoisier married 13 years old Marie-Anne Pierrette. She learned English to keep Antoine abreast of chemical progress occuring in England. She helped with the experiments, recorded observations and results, and drew sketches for his notebook and publications. They lived in an age when all accomplishments were attributed to men. But perhaps the new chemistry of Lavoisier should be considered the product of their teamwork.

In 1772 he found, contrary to the Phlogiston theory, that burning both phosphorus and sulfur increases their weights, producing acid forming gases.

When Priestly visited Paris in October 1774, he met Lavoisier and shared his discovery of dephlogisticated air. Lavoisier amplified Priestly's experiment to prove that that air absorbed by heating mercury gently to form the red calx is exactly the same volume as the dephlogisticated air liberated by heating more strongly.

Convinced that evidence was finally at hand showing that air and water are not single elements, Lavoisier believed that Boyle's century old proposed definition of element could explain all the distinctly different airs as well as the weight contradictions in the phlogiston theory. Elements are the substances we have not discovered means for separating. They are all the substances into which we are capable to reduce (in weight) bodies by decomposition. Lavoisier conducted a great systematic series of experiments, reporting the results periodically in memoirs to the Academie Royale des Sciences.

All the while he was heavily engaged in official duties as fermier generale (financiers that leased the right for French tax collections on commerce). He also was active promoting improvements for French political, social, and economic conditions.

Lavoisier published in 1789 the Traite elementaire de Chimie... describing a revolutionary new system of chemistry. Lavoisier's book describes the new chemistry: besides the new concept of element, it contains

a vast amount of experimentally observed facts,
Lavoisier's explanations for those facts, and
the new rational system of nomenclature Lavoisier believed essential for both freeing chemistry of archaic theory and for establishing a superior understanding of reality.

Underlying the new chemistry is the assumption that matter is conserved. Weight becomes the tool for determining if a product is simplier or more complex than an ingredient.

The Four Element Theory was abandoned: Each distinctive Air becomes a different gas, many of them elements. Water becomes a compound of the elements Hydrogene and Oxygene. Earth is a variety of substances, mostly compounds. Fire becomes two elements: Calorique (heat) and Lumiere (light).

The metal compounds studied by the alchemists become seventeen different elements. Mercury is merely one of the metallic elements. Mixtures of metals become alloys.

Combustion is the process of combination with Oxygene. All acids are compounds containing Oxygene and a distinctive element. Soufre (Sulfur) is one of six nonmetallic acidifiable elements. Salts are the combination of acids and either metals or earthly bases. Lavoisier expect the Alkalies to be found to be compound.

**Lavoisier's Table of the Elements**
**from Traite elementaire de Chimie... [1789]**
Simple Subftances	Current Names:	non-metallic Oxydable & Acidifiable	Current Names: Non-metals	Metallic Bodies Oxydable & Acidifiable	Current Names: Metals	Simple Salifiable Earthy Subftances	Current Names: Natural salts
Lumiere Calorique Oxygene Azote Hydrogene	Light* Heat* Oxygen Nitrogen Hydrogen	Soufre Phofphore Carbone Radical muriatique Radical fluorique Radical boracique	Sulfur Phosphorus Carbon element in chlorine+ element in fluorine+ element in borate	Antimoine Argent Arienic Bifmuth Cobalt Cuivre Etain Fer Manganefe Mercure Molybdene Nickel Or Platine Plomb Tungftene Zinc	Antimony Silver Arsenic Bismuth Cobalt Copper Tin Iron Manganese Mercury Molybdenium Nickel Gold Platinium Lead Tungstun Zinc	Chaux Magnefie Baryte Alumine Silice	Calcium oxide Magnesium oxide Barium oxide Aluminum oxide Silicon dioxide
	* since rejected as elements		+ never isolated				(↑ decomposed later using electricity; now compounds, not elements)

During the Reign of Terror in 1994, Antoine Lavoisier was arrested with 27 others by the French Revolutionary Tribune for abusing the office of fermier general by adulterating tobacco and water. They were guillotined the same day. Later Marie-Anne was briefly married to Count Rumford.

Questions:: What is the relation between a new idea and prior idea of others?; What is was so brilliant about the ideas of Lavoisier and friends?; What other exciting, challenging activities could brilliant people do besides chemistry? So why did these people choose to do chemistry?; Prior ideas about elements are attributed to men. Is this a cover up of contributions of women, due to a culture that excluded women from science, or due to some other cause?

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page created 23 March 2002 latest revision 26 April 2010				by D Trapp