- The science of the composition, structure, properties, and reactions of matter, especially of atomic and molecular systems.
- The composition, structure, properties, and reactions of a substance.
- The elements of a complex entity and their dynamic interrelation: “Now that they had a leader, a restless chemistry possessed the group” (John Updike).
- Mutual attraction or sympathy; rapport: The chemistry was good between the partners.
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n., pl. -tries.
US History Encyclopedia:
Chemistry
Chemistry is the study of the chemical and physical change of matter.
Early U.S. Chemistry and Chemical Societies
The beginning of chemistry in the United States came in the form of manufacturing goods such as glass, ink, and gunpowder. In the mid-1700s, some academic instruction in chemistry started in Philadelphia. The earliest known academic institution to formally teach chemistry was the medical school of the College of Philadelphia, where Benjamin Rush was appointed the chair of chemistry in 1769. Not only was Rush the first American chemistry teacher, he may have been the first to publish a chemistry textbook written in the United States. In 1813, the Chemical Society of Philadelphia published the first American chemical journal, Transactions. Although other chemical societies existed at that time, the Philadelphia Chemical Society was the first society to publish its own journal. Unfortunately, the journal and chemical society lasted only one year.
Sixty years later, in 1874, at Joseph Priestley's home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, a number of renowned scientists gathered to celebrate Priestley's 1774 discovery of oxygen. It was at this gathering that Charles F. Chandler proposed the concept of an American chemical society. The proposal was turned down, in part because the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) had a chemical section that provided an adequate forum for assembly and debate. Two years later, a national society, based in New York and called the American Chemical Society, was formed with John W. Draper as its first president. Since New York chemists dominated most of the meetings and council representative positions, the Washington Chemical Society was founded in 1884 by two chemists based in Washington, D.C., Frank W. Clarke and Harvey W. Wiley. In 1890, the American Chemical Society constitution was changed to encourage the formation of local sections, such as New York, Washington, and other chemical societies in the United States, thereby leading to a national organization. By 1908, the society had approximately 3,400 members, outnumbering the German Chemical Society, which at that time was the center of world chemistry. Today, the American Chemical Society has some 163,503 members, and the United States is considered the center of world chemistry. In addition to its premier journal, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the society also publishes several other journals that are divisional in nature, including the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Biochemistry. The society also produces a publication called Chemical Abstracts, which catalogs abstracts from thousands of papers printed in chemical journals around the world.
European Influences
Although the various disciplines of chemistry—organic, inorganic, analytical, biochemistry, and physical chemistry—have a rich American history, they have also been influenced by European, especially German, chemists. The influence of physical chemistry on the development of chemistry in the United States began with American students who studied under a number of German chemists, most notably the 1909 Nobel Prize winner, Wilhelm Ostwald. In a 1946 survey by Stephen S. Visher, three of Ostwald's students were recognized as influential chemistry teachers—Gilbert N. Lewis, Arthur A. Noyes, and Theodore W. Richards. Of these three, Richards would be awarded the 1914 Nobel Prize for his contributions in accurately determining the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements. Lewis and Noyes would go on to play a major role in the development of academic programs at institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Caltech. While at these institutions Lewis and Noyes attracted and trained numerous individuals, including William C. Bray, Richard C. Tolman, Joel H. Hildebrand, Merle Randall, Glenn T. Seaborg, and Linus Pauling. These individuals placed physical chemistry at the center of their academic programs and curricula. Students from these institutions, as well as other universities across America, took the knowledge they gained in physical chemistry to places like the Geophysical Laboratories, General Electric, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, and Bausch and Lomb.
Influence could also flow from America to Europe, as it did with one of the earliest great American chemists, J. Willard Gibbs (1839–1903). Gibbs, educated at Yale University, was the first doctor of engineering in the United States. His contribution to chemistry was in the field of thermodynamics—the study of heat and its transformations. Using thermodynamic principles, he deduced the Gibbs phase rule, which relates the number of components and phases of mixtures to the degrees of freedom in a closed system. Gibbs's work did not receive much attention in the United States due to its publication in a minor journal, but in Europe his ideas were well received by the physics community, including Wilhelm Ostwald, who translated Gibbs's work into German.
A second influence from Europe came around the 1920s, when a very bright student from Caltech named Linus Pauling went overseas as a postdoctoral fellow for eighteen months. In Europe, Pauling spent time working with Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Arnold Sommerfeld, Walter Heitler, and Fritz London. During this time, Pauling trained himself in the new area of quantum mechanics and its application to chemical bonding. A significant part of our knowledge about the chemical bond and its properties is due to Pauling. Upon his return from Europe, Pauling went to back to Caltech and in 1950 published a paper explaining the nature of helical structures in proteins.
At the University of California at Berkeley, Gilbert N. Lewis directed a brilliant scientist, Glenn T. Seaborg. Seaborg worked as Lewis's assistant on acid-base chemistry during the day and at night he explored the mysteries of the atom. Seaborg is known for leading the first group to discover plutonium. This discovery would lead him to head a section on the top secret Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb. Seaborg's second biggest achievement was his proposal to modify the periodic table to include the actinide series. This concept predicted that the fourteen actinides, including the first eleven transuranium elements, would form a transition series analogous to the rare-earth series of lanthanide elements and therefore show how the transuranium elements fit into the periodic table. Seaborg's work on the transuranium elements led to his sharing the 1951 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Edwin McMillan. In 1961, Seaborg became the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, where he remained for ten years.
Perhaps Seaborg's greatest contribution to chemistry in the United States was his advocacy of science and mathematics education. The cornerstone of his legacy on education is the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Berkeley campus, a public science center and institution for curriculum development and research in science and mathematics education. Seaborg also served as principal investigator of the well-known Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) program, which publishes the many classes, workshops, teacher's guides, and handbooks from the Lawrence Hall of Science. To honor a brilliant career by such an outstanding individual, element 106 was named Seaborgium.
Twentieth-Century Research and Discoveries
Research in the American chemical industry started in the early twentieth century with the establishment of research laboratories such as General Electric, Eastman Kodak, AT&T, and DuPont. The research was necessary in order to replace badly needed products and chemicals that were normally obtained from Germany. Industry attracted re-search chemists from their academic labs and teaching assignments to head small, dynamic research groups. In 1909, Irving Langmuir was persuaded to leave his position as a chemistry teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology to do research at General Electric. It was not until World War I that industrial chemical research took off. Langmuir was awarded a Nobel Prize for his industrial work. In the early 1900s, chemists were working on polymer projects and free radical reactions in order to synthesize artificial rubber. DuPont hired Wallace H. Carothers, who worked on synthesizing polymers. A product of Carothers's efforts was the synthesis of nylon, which would become DuPont's greatest moneymaker. In 1951, modern organometallic chemistry began at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh with the publication of an article in the journal Nature on the synthesis of an organo-iron compound called dicyclopentadienyliron, better known as ferrocene. Professor Peter Pauson and Thomas J. Kealy, a student, were the first to publish its synthesis, and two papers would be published in 1952 with the correct predicted structure. One paper was by Robert Burns Woodward, Geoffrey Wilkinson, Myron Rosenblum, and Mark Whiting; the second was by Ernst Otto Fischer and Wolfgang Pfab. Finally, a complete crystal structure of ferrocene was published in separate papers by Phillip F. Eiland and Ray Pepinsky and by Jack D. Dunitz and Leslie E. Orgel. The X-ray crystallographic structures would confirm the earlier predicted structures. Ferrocene is a "sandwich" compound in which an iron ion is sandwiched between two cyclopentadienyl rings. The discovery of ferrocene was important in many aspects of chemistry, such as revisions in bonding concepts, synthesis of similar compounds, and uses of these compounds as new materials. Most importantly, the discovery of ferrocene has merged two distinct fields of chemistry, organic and inorganic, and led to important advances in the fields of homogeneous catalysis and polymerization.
Significant American achievements in chemistry were recognized by the Nobel Prize committee in the last part of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century. Some examples include: the 1993 award to Kary B. Mullis for his work on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR); the 1996 award to Robert F. Curl Jr. and Richard E. Smalley for their part in the discovery of C60, a form of molecular carbon; the 1998 award to John A. Pople and Walter Kohn for the development of computational methods in quantum chemistry; the 1999 award to Ahmed H. Zewail for his work on reactions using femtosecond (10-14 seconds) chemistry; the 2000 award to Alan G. MacDiarmid and Alan J. Heeger for the discovery and development of conductive polymers; and the 2001 award to William S. Knowles and K. Barry Sharpless for their work on asymmetric synthesis. The outcomes of these discoveries are leading science in the twenty-first century. The use of PCR analysis has contributed to the development of forensic science. The discovery C60 and related carbon compounds, known as nanotubes, is leading to ideas in drug delivery methods and the storage of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The computational tools developed by Pople and Kohn are being used to assist scientists in analyzing and designing experiments. Femtosecond chemistry is providing insight into how bonds are made and broken as a chemical reaction proceeds. Heeger and MacDiarmid's work has led to what is now known as plastic electronics—devices made of conducting polymers, ranging from light-emitting diodes to flat panel displays. The work by Knowles and Sharpless has provided organic chemists with the tools to synthesize compounds that contain chirality or handedness. This has had a tremendous impact on the synthesis of drugs, agrochemicals, and petrochemicals.
Bibliography
Brock, William H. The Norton History of Chemistry. New York: Norton, 1993.
———. The Chemical Tree: A History of Chemistry. New York: Norton, 2000.
Greenberg, Arthur. A Chemical History Tour: Picturing Chemistry from Alchemy to Modern Molecular Science. New York: Wiley, 2000.
Servos, John W. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of Science in America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990.
—Jeffrey D. Madura
Columbia Encyclopedia:
chemistry,
branch of science concerned with the properties, composition, and structure of substances and the changes they undergo when they combine or react under specified conditions.
Branches of Chemistry
Chemistry can be divided into branches according to either the substances studied or the types of study conducted. The primary division of the first type is between inorganic chemistry and organic chemistry. Divisions of the second type are physical chemistry and analytical chemistry.
The original distinction between organic and inorganic chemistry arose as chemists gradually realized that compounds of biological origin were quite different in their general properties from those of mineral origin; organic chemistry was defined as the study of substances produced by living organisms. However, when it was discovered in the 19th cent. that organic molecules can be produced artificially in the laboratory, this definition had to be abandoned. Organic chemistry is most simply defined as the study of the compounds of carbon. Inorganic chemistry is the study of chemical elements and their compounds (with the exception of carbon compounds).
Physical chemistry is concerned with the physical properties of materials, such as their electrical and magnetic behavior and their interaction with electromagnetic fields. Subcategories within physical chemistry are thermochemistry, electrochemistry, and chemical kinetics. Thermochemistry is the investigation of the changes in energy and entropy that occur during chemical reactions and phase transformations (see states of matter). Electrochemistry concerns the effects of electricity on chemical changes and interconversions of electric and chemical energy such as that in a voltaic cell. Chemical kinetics is concerned with the details of chemical reactions and of how equilibrium is reached between the products and reactants.
Analytical chemistry is a collection of techniques that allows exact laboratory determination of the composition of a given sample of material. In qualitative analysis all the atoms and molecules present are identified, with particular attention to trace elements. In quantitative analysis the exact weight of each constituent is obtained as well. Stoichiometry is the branch of chemistry concerned with the weights of the chemicals participating in chemical reactions. See also chemical analysis.
History of Chemistry
The earliest practical knowledge of chemistry was concerned with metallurgy, pottery, and dyes; these crafts were developed with considerable skill, but with no understanding of the principles involved, as early as 3500 B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The basic ideas of element and compound were first formulated by the Greek philosophers during the period from 500 to 300 B.C. Opinion varied, but it was generally believed that four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) combined to form all things. Aristotle's definition of a simple body as “one into which other bodies can be decomposed and which itself is not capable of being divided” is close to the modern definition of element.
About the beginning of the Christian era in Alexandria, the ancient Egyptian industrial arts and Greek philosophical speculations were fused into a new science. The beginnings of chemistry, or alchemy, as it was first known, are mingled with occultism and magic. Interests of the period were the transmutation of base metals into gold, the imitation of precious gems, and the search for the elixir of life, thought to grant immortality. Muslim conquests in the 7th cent. A.D. diffused the remains of Hellenistic civilization to the Arab world. The first chemical treatises to become well known in Europe were Latin translations of Arabic works, made in Spain c.A.D. 1100; hence it is often erroneously supposed that chemistry originated among the Arabs. Alchemy developed extensively during the Middle Ages, cultivated largely by itinerant scholars who wandered over Europe looking for patrons.
Evolution of Modern Chemistry
In the hands of the “Oxford Chemists” (Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and John Mayow) chemistry began to emerge as distinct from the pseudoscience of alchemy. Boyle (1627–91) is often called the founder of modern chemistry (an honor sometimes also given Antoine Lavoisier, 1743–94). He performed experiments under reduced pressure, using an air pump, and discovered that volume and pressure are inversely related in gases (see gas laws). Hooke gave the first rational explanation of combustion—as combination with air—while Mayow studied animal respiration. Even as the English chemists were moving toward the correct theory of combustion, two Germans, J. J. Becher and G. E. Stahl, introduced the false phlogiston theory of combustion, which held that the substance phlogiston is contained in all combustible bodies and escapes when the bodies burn.
The discovery of various gases and the analysis of air as a mixture of gases occurred during the phlogiston period. Carbon dioxide, first described by J. B. van Helmont and rediscovered by Joseph Black in 1754, was originally called fixed air. Hydrogen, discovered by Boyle and carefully studied by Henry Cavendish, was called inflammable air and was sometimes identified with phlogiston itself. Cavendish also showed that the explosion of hydrogen and oxygen produces water. C. W. Scheele found that air is composed of two fluids, only one of which supports combustion. He was the first to obtain pure oxygen (1771–73), although he did not recognize it as an element. Joseph Priestley independently discovered oxygen by heating the red oxide of mercury with a burning glass; he was the last great defender of the phlogiston theory.
The work of Priestley, Black, and Cavendish was radically reinterpreted by Lavoisier, who did for chemistry what Newton had done for physics a century before. He made no important new discoveries of his own; rather, he was a theoretician. He recognized the true nature of combustion, introduced a new chemical nomenclature, and wrote the first modern chemistry textbook. He erroneously believed that all acids contain oxygen.
Impact of the Atomic Theory
The assumption that compounds were of definite composition was implicit in 18th-century chemistry. J. L. Proust formally stated the law of constant proportions in 1797. C. L. Berthollet opposed this law, holding that composition depended on the method of preparation. The issue was resolved in favor of Proust by John Dalton's atomic theory (1808). The atomic theory goes back to the Greeks, but it did not prove fruitful in chemistry until Dalton ascribed relative weights to the atoms of chemical elements. Electrochemical theories of chemical combinations were developed by Humphry Davy and J. J. Berzelius. Davy discovered the alkali metals by passing an electric current through their molten oxides. Michael Faraday discovered that a definite quantity of charge must flow in order to deposit a given weight of material in solution. Amedeo Avogadro introduced the hypothesis that equal volumes of gases at the same pressure and temperature contain the same number of molecules.
William Prout suggested that as all elements seemed to have atomic weights that were multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen, they could all be in some way different combinations of hydrogen atoms. This contributed to the concept of the periodic table of the elements, the culmination of a long effort to find regular, systematic properties among the elements. Periodic laws were put forward almost simultaneously and independently by J. L. Meyer in Germany and D. I. Mendeleev in Russia (1869). An early triumph of the new theory was the discovery of new elements that fit the empty spaces in the table. William Ramsay's discovery, in collaboration with Lord Rayleigh, of argon and other inert gases in the atmosphere extended the periodic table
Organic Chemistry and the Modern Era
Organic chemistry developed extensively in the 19th cent., prompted in part by Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea (1828), which disproved the belief that only living organisms could produce organic molecules. Other important organic chemists include Justus von Liebig, C. A. Wurtz, and J. B. Dumas. In 1852 Edward Frankland introduced the idea of valency (see valence), and in 1858 F. A. Kekule showed that carbon atoms are tetravalent and are linked together in chains. Kekule's ring structure for benzene opened the way to modern theories of organic chemistry. Henri Louis Le Châtelier, J. H. van't Hoff, and Wilhelm Ostwald pioneered the application of thermodynamics to chemistry. Further contributions were the phase rule of J. W. Gibbs, the ionization equilibrium theory of S. A. Arrhenius, and the heat theorem of Walther Nernst. Ernst Fischer's work on the amino acids marks the beginning of molecular biology.
At the end of the 19th cent., the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson and of radioactivity by A. E. Becquerel revealed the close connection between chemistry and physics. The work of Ernest Rutherford, H. G. J. Moseley, and Niels Bohr on atomic structure (see atom) was applied to molecular structures. G. N. Lewis, Irving Langmuir, and Linus Pauling developed the electronic theory of chemical bonds, directed valency, and molecular orbitals (see molecular orbital theory). Transmutation of the elements, first achieved by Rutherford, has led to the creation of elements not found in nature; in work pioneered by Glenn Seaborg elements heavier than uranium have been produced. With the rapid development of polymer chemistry after World War II a host of new synthetic fibers and materials have been added to the market. A fuller understanding of the relation between the structure of molecules and their properties has allowed chemists to tailor predictively new materials to meet specific needs.
Bibliography
See I. Asimov, A Short History of Chemistry (1965); D. A. McQuarrie and P. A. Rock, General Chemistry (1984); L. Pauling, General Chemistry (3d ed. 1991); R. C. Weast, ed., CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (published annually).
History 1450-1789:
Chemistry
The history of early modern chemistry, understood as a body of ideas and practices related to compounding and decomposing material substances, takes us to alchemy and apothecary laboratories, artisans' workshops, metallurgists and manufacturers, scientific societies, arsenals, royal courts, and public squares. It should not be understood in terms of the victory of scientific theory over arcane beliefs, but of the changing employment of its various technologies and the contexts in and by which they were legitimized.
Material and Bodily Technology
Chemistry's material technology—that is, its instruments and laboratory equipment—remained stable throughout most of the period, but was augmented by precision-oriented apparatus in the second half of the eighteenth century as the study of heat and gases, along with early industrial innovations, redirected chemical investigations. Increasingly accurate measuring devices helped bring about standardization in manufacturing ventures (e.g. Josiah Wedgwood's pottery works) while feeding debates over how to organize chemistry as an investigative enterprise. Should the heterogeneous chemical world be disciplined by analyzing qualitative or quantitative data?
The way chemical operators and investigators used their own bodies was part of this historical development and debate. As long as chemical determination rested on examining colors, smells, tastes and textures, the human senses served as crucial chemical instruments. As experimental claims increasingly relied on precise measurements by the late eighteenth century (a hallmark of the chemical revolution), sense evidence became "subjective" and, hence, a questionable foundation for proof. Chemists continued to rely on their senses, but proof became increasingly a matter of quantitative determination.
Theory and Practice
The question of what constituted a primary chemical element was not a part of practical chemists' daily routine. Neither, prior to the late eighteenth century, was there a direct correlation between one's theoretical views and how one actually carried out chemical procedures, which can be seen by examining the impact of the mechanical philosophy on chemistry. Textbook writers such as Nicolas Lémery (1645–1715) attributed a substance's qualities to the shape of particles that composed it. But authors left such explanations behind when dealing with actual chemical operations. Robert Boyle (1627–1691), often labeled a mechanical philosopher, made a bigger impact on chemistry through his interests in practical knowledge and alchemy. Even Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) mechanism, which married particles to short-range forces, hardly touched chemical practice—although theorists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) hoped chemical attraction (affinities) could be explained mathematically with Newtonian forces. Working chemists continued to learn their trade through apprenticeship and to be guided by practical recipes. Acquiring tacit knowledge and practical skills, then, were certainly as important for the historical development of chemistry as theoretical knowledge.
It is, however, historically important that matter theory became linked to chemical research in an increasingly instrumental way by the eighteenth century. Paracelsus (1493–1541), who argued for the chemical foundation of medicine (iatrochemistry), claimed that Aristotle's four elements appeared in bodies as mercury, sulfur, and salt. Mercury was the principle of volatility and fusibility, sulfur of inflammability, and salt of incombustibility. Therefore, chemists might recognize a compound not only as heavy or wet, but also as liable to specific chemical processes.
Johann Joachim Becher (1635–1682) substituted three categories of earth for Paracelsus's principles and explained material change largely in terms of their combination with and release from compounds through processes such as combustion. His student George Ernst Stahl (1660–1734) further codified Becher's work, giving the name "phlogiston" (from the Greek verb "to inflame") to Becher's terra pinguis (the sulfur of inflammability) and teaching that phlogiston's presence was responsible for characteristics including metallicity, color, and inflammability. In France, the influential chemistry lecturer Guillaume François Rouelle (1703–1770) popularized the idea of phlogiston, associating it with fire. Others such as Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) identified it variously with electricity and hydrogen. Phlogiston was used to explain phenomena including combustion, calcination, and the quality of air, thereby organizing a number of research activities under a set of interconnecting theories and emphasizing the potential reversibility of chemical processes.
Others began considering the Aristotelian elements as material instruments. Stephen Hales (1677–1761) focused on the expansion of air and the way in which it could become "fixed" in bodies. Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) went further, organizing his chemistry lectures largely around the investigative consequences of considering earth, water, air, and fire as instruments that afforded specific chemical processes. A Newtonian by public pronouncement, Boerhaave actually did much more to stimulate chemical research by focusing on the reactive effects of these elemental instruments. He related fire (the substance of heat) to the primary processes of expansion and repulsion. He presented air and water as providing containers in which other particles were suspended. It wasn't long before these "instruments" themselves were subjected to chemical analysis, as investigators sought to understand whether their "instrumental" presence was chemically passive or active. Research in the second half of the eighteenth century was marked by investigations of newly discovered gases (qualitatively distinct "airs"), the role of heat, and, in the 1780s, the composition of water.
Literary Technology
Chemical theory and instrumental research practices were also linked in the way chemical knowledge came to be organized nomenclaturally and in analytical tables (chemistry's literary technology). Related to the heritage of alchemy and the various contexts in which chemical substances were discovered and used, chemical nomenclature was traditionally a colorfully unsystematic affair. Growing interest in chemical research in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially the investigation of a number of new "airs," led chemists to consider nomenclatural reform. Standard conventions for naming new substances would allow researchers from various communities to communicate. In 1787 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794), Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau (1737–1816), Antoine François Fourcroy (1755–1809), and Claude Simon Berthollet (1748–1822) revamped chemistry's nomenclature totally, enunciating in their Méthode de nomenclature chimique a revolutionary way to structure chemistry's investigative knowledge and practices.
Oxygen's discovery and naming provides a good example. Recognized in the 1770s as a distinct "air" responsible for combustion, supporting respiration, and the process of calcination, it was variously named the "purest part of air," "fire air," "eminently respirable air," and "dephlogisticated air." Lavoisier focused on what he considered its most far-reaching characteristic and argued that it should be called "oxygen," the "generator" of acids. Not only did he use oxygen's causal properties to argue against the existence of phlogiston, he named the substance in a way that simultaneously reflected how the relation between these properties ought to be understood and how chemists ought to pursue future research.
Traditionally, the secretive nature of many alchemical and artisanal practices had combined with chemistry's lack of institutional and disciplinary unity to work against the development of a public, systematic means of recording compositional data. This began changing when Étienne François Geoffroy (1672–1731) presented his "Table of the different relationships observed between different substances" to the French Academy of Sciences in 1718. Recording and publishing these relationships, often called affinities, provided a handy way for chemists to share and expand empirical knowledge without having to agree on their theoretical explanation. As the century progressed, affinity and solvent tables became more sophisticated (recording, for example, how relations were observed), leading chemists to hope that their field might thereby gain the certainty of a scientific discipline. As was true with nomenclatural reform, this was largely achieved by Lavoisier and his colleagues, with revolutionary results. Lavoisier's 1789 textbook Traitéélémentaire de chimie included tables whose structures redirected research along the same lines as chemistry's new nomenclature.
Lavoisier began his textbook by arguing that humans live in a Condillacian world; chemists should therefore build their discipline on a foundation of sensible facts. Chemistry's nomenclature should express only what chemists actively observed; its basic elements should be defined by laboratory procedures. In fact, Lavoisier began his "table of simple substances" with five elements that could never be isolated, but which he made responsible for fundamental chemical processes. Oxygen "generates" acidity, hydrogen "generates" water. Caloric, the substance of heat, interacts with chemical affinities to regulate composition and decomposition. In place of affinity and solvent tables, Lavoisier filled his textbook with tables that simultaneously recorded and predicted the combinatorial powers of elements such as oxygen. Together they formed an integrated research program intended to discipline chemistry.
Chemistry's Instrumentalization
Lavoisier's laboratory practices reflected what appeared on the pages of his book, the last third of which treated laboratory instruments. If primary elements couldn't be isolated, Lavoisier argued that their active presence could be quantitatively traced. Unmeasurable phlogiston was out, precision balances were in, as seen in his proof that water is compounded of hydrogen and oxygen. Affinities could not yet be quantified, but the effect of caloric on composition and decomposition could be quantitatively inferred by the melting of ice in an ice calorimeter—an instrument designed by Lavoisier. In general, nomenclature, instrumental theory, and measurement provided a research program for future chemists, in terms of both questions and methods for resolving them.
This culmination of chemistry's instrumentalization was, arguably, the essence of the chemical revolution. Whether others adopted Lavoisier's theories or followed the specifics of his research proposals, the modern discipline of chemistry was permanently marked by the instrumental bounds he prescibed.
Bibliography
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette. Lavoisier. Memoires d'une révolution. Paris, 1993.
Golinski, Jan. Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760–1820. Cambridge, U.K., 1992.
Hannaway, Owen. The Chemist and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry. Baltimore, 1985.
Holmes, Frederick Lawrence. Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise. Berkeley, 1989.
Roberts, Lissa. "The Death of the Sensuous Chemist: the 'New' Chemistry and the Transformation of Sensuous Technology." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1995): 503–529.
——. "Setting the Table: The Disciplinary Development of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as Read through the Changing Structure of its Tables." In The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument, edited by Peter Dear, pp. 99–132. Philadelphia, 1991.
—LISSA ROBERTS
Quotes About:
Chemistry
Quotes:
"I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals -- my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octahedron crystals, -- with a fine blue florescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odor."
- Lafcadio Hearn
"For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world. I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: I will understand this, too, I will understand everything."
- Primo Levi
"There's nothing colder than chemistry."
- Anita Loos
Wikipedia:
chemistry
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Chemistry (from Egyptian kēme (chem), meaning "earth"[1]) is the science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions.[2] Chemistry is a physical science related to studies of various atoms, molecules, crystals and other aggregrates of matter whether in isolation or combination, which incorporates the concepts of energy and entropy in relation to the spontaneity of chemical processes.
Disciplines within chemistry are traditionally grouped by the type of matter being studied or the kind of study. These include inorganic chemistry, the study of inorganic matter; organic chemistry, the study of organic matter; biochemistry, the study of substances found in biological organisms; physical chemistry, the energy related studies of chemical systems at macro, molecular and submolecular scales; analytical chemistry, the analysis of material samples to gain an understanding of their chemical composition and structure. Many more specialized disciplines have emerged in recent years, e.g. neurochemistry the chemical study of the mind (see subdisciplines).
Historically, modern chemistry evolved out of alchemy following the chemical revolution (1773) (see History).
Overview
Chemistry is the scientific study of interaction of substances called chemical substances[3] that are constituted of atoms or the subatomic components that make up atoms: protons, electrons and neutrons.[4] Atoms combine to produce ions, molecules or crystals. Chemistry can be called "the central science" because it connects the other natural sciences, such as astronomy, physics, material science, biology, and geology.[5][6]
The genesis of chemistry can be traced to certain practices, known as alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world, particularly the middle east.[7]
The structure of objects we commonly use and the properties of the matter we commonly interact with, are a consequence of the properties of chemical substances and their interactions. For example, steel is harder than iron because its atoms are bound together in a more rigid crystalline lattice; wood burns or undergoes rapid oxidation because it can react spontaneously with oxygen in a chemical reaction above a certain temperature; sugar and salt dissolve in water because their molecular/ionic properties are such that dissolution is preferred under the ambient conditions.
The transformations that are studied in chemistry are a result of interaction either between different chemical substances or between matter and energy. Traditional chemistry involves study of interactions between substances in a chemistry laboratory using various forms of laboratory glassware.
Energy and entropy considerations are invariably important in almost all chemical studies. Chemical substances are classified in terms of their structure, phase as well as their chemical compositions. They can be analysed using the tools of chemical analysis, e.g. spectroscopy and chromatography.
Chemistry is an integral part of the science curriculum both at the high school as well as the early college level. At these levels, it is often called 'general chemistry' which is an introduction to a wide variety of fundamental concepts that enable the student to acquire tools and skills useful at the advanced levels, whereby chemistry is invariably studied in any of its various sub-disciplines. Scientists, engaged in chemical research are known as chemists.[9] Most chemists specialize in one or more sub-disciplines.
History
- See also: Alchemy, Timeline of chemistry, and Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The genesis of chemistry can be traced to the widely observed phenomenon of burning that led to metallurgy- the art and science of processing ores to get metals (e.g. metallurgy in ancient India). The greed for gold led to the discovery of the process for its purification, even though, the underlying principles were not well understood -- it was thought to be a transformation rather than purification. Many scholars in those days thought it reasonable to believe that there exist means for transforming cheaper (base) metals into gold. This gave way to alchemy, and the search for the Philosopher's Stone, which was believed to bring about such a transformation by mere touch.[10]
Some consider medieval Muslims to be the earliest chemists, who introduced precise observation and controlled experimentation into the field, and discovered numerous chemical substances.[11] The most influential Muslim chemists were Geber (d. 815), al-Kindi (d. 873), al-Razi (d. 925), and al-Biruni (d. 1048).[12] The works of Geber became more widely known in Europe through Latin translations by a pseudo-Geber in 14th century Spain, who also wrote some of his own books under the pen name "Geber". The contribution of Indian alchemists and metallurgists in the development of chemistry was also quite significant.[13]
The emergence of chemistry in Europe was primarily due to the recurrent incidence of the plague and blights there during the so called Dark Ages. This gave rise to a need for medicines. It was thought that there exists a universal medicine called the Elixir of Life that can cure all diseases, but like the Philosopher's Stone, it was never found.
For some practitioners, alchemy was an intellectual pursuit, over time, they got better at it. Paracelsus (1493-1541), for example, rejected the 4-elemental theory and with only a vague understanding of his chemicals and medicines, formed a hybrid of alchemy and science in what was to be called iatrochemistry. Similarly, the influences of philosophers such as Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and René Descartes (1596-1650), who demanded more rigor in mathematics and in removing bias from scientific observations, led to a scientific revolution. In chemistry, this began with Robert Boyle (1627-1691), who came up with an equations known as the Boyle's Law about the characteristics of gaseous state.[14] Chemistry indeed came of age when Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), developed the theory of Conservation of mass in 1783; and the development of the Atomic Theory by John Dalton around 1800. The Law of Conservation of Mass resulted in the reformulation of chemistry based on this law and the oxygen theory of combustion, which was largely based on the work of Lavoisier. Lavoisier's fundamental contributions to chemistry were a result of a conscious effort to fit all experiments into the framework of a single theory. He established the consistent use of the chemical balance, used oxygen to overthrow the phlogiston theory, and developed a new system of chemical nomenclature and made contibution to the modern metric system. Lavoisier also worked to translate the archaic and technical language of chemistry into something that could be easily understood by the largely uneducated masses, leading to an increased public interest in chemistry. All these advances in chemistry led to what is usually called the chemical revolution. The contributions of Lavoisier led to what is now called modern chemistry - the chemistry that is studied in educational institutions all over the world. It is because of these and other contribtuions that Antoine Lavoisier is often celebrated as the "Father of Modern Chemistry". The later discovery of Friedrich Wöhler that many natural substances, organic compounds, can indeed be synthesized in a chemistry laboratory also helped the modern chemistry to mature from its infancy.
The discoveries of the chemical elements has a long history from the days of alchemy and culminating in the creation of the periodic table of the chemical elements by Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907)[15] and later discoveries of some synthetic elements.
Etymology
The word chemistry comes from the earlier study of alchemy, which is basically the quest to make gold from earthen starting materials.[16] As to the origin of the word "alchemy" the question is a debatable one; it certainly can be traced back to the Greeks, and some, following E. Wallis Budge, have also asserted Egyptian origins. Alchemy, generally, derives from the old French alkemie from the Arabic al-kimia - "the art of transformation". The Arabs borrowed the word "kimia" from the Greeks when they conquered Alexandria in the year 642 AD. A tentative outline is as follows:
- Egyptian alchemy [5,000 BCE – 400 BCE], formulate early "element" theories such as the Ogdoad.
- Greek alchemy [332 BCE – 642 CE], the Greek king Alexander the Great conquers Egypt and founds Alexandria, having the world's largest library, where scholars and wise men gather to study.
- Arabian alchemy [642 CE – 1200], the Arabs take over Alexandria; Jabir is the main chemist
- European alchemy [1300 – present], Pseudo-Geber builds on Arabic chemistry
- Chemistry [1661], Boyle writes his classic chemistry text The Sceptical Chymist
- Chemistry [1787], Lavoisier writes his classic Elements of Chemistry
- Chemistry [1803], Dalton publishes his Atomic Theory
Thus, an alchemist was called a 'chemist' in popular speech, and later the suffix "-ry" was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as "chemistry".
Definitions
In retrospect, the definition of chemistry seems to invariably change per decade, as new discoveries and theories add to the functionality of the science. Shown below are some of the standard definitions used by various noted chemists:
- Alchemy (330) – the study of the composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies (Zosimos).[17]
- Chymistry (1661) – the subject of the material principles of mixt bodies (Boyle).[18]
- Chymistry (1663) – a scientific art, by which one learns to dissolve bodies, and draw from them the different substances on their composition, and how to unite them again, and exalt them to an higher perfection (Glaser).[19]
- Chemistry (1730) – the art of resolving mixt, compound, or aggregate bodies into their principles; and of composing such bodies from those principles (Stahl).[20]
- Chemistry (1837) – the science concerned with the laws and effects of molecular forces (Dumas).[21]
- Chemistry (1947) – the science of substances: their structure, their properties, and the reactions that change them into other substances (Pauling).[22]
- Chemistry (1998) – the study of matter and the changes it undergoes (Chang).[23]
Basic concepts
Several concepts are essential for the study of chemistry, some of them are:[24]
Atom
An atom is the basic unit of an element. It is a collection of matter consisting of a positively charged core (the atomic nucleus) which contains protons and neutrons, and which maintains a number of electrons to balance the positive charge in the nucleus. Atom is also the smallest entity that can be envisaged to retain some of the chemical properties of the element, viz. Electronegativity, Ionization potential, Preferred oxidation state(s), Coordination number, Preferred types of bonds to form e.g., metallic, ionic, covalent.
Element
The concept of chemical element is related to that of chemical substance. A chemical element is characterized by a
particular number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms.
This number is known as the atomic number of the element. For example, all atoms with 6
protons in their nuclei are atoms of the chemical element carbon, and all atoms with 92 protons
in their nuclei are atoms of the element uranium. However, several
The most convenient presentation of the chemical elements is in the periodic table of the chemical elements, which groups elements by atomic number. Due to its ingenious arrangement, groups, or columns, and periods, or rows, of elements in the table either share several chemical properties, or follow a certain trend in characteristics such as atomic radius, electronegativity, etc. Lists of the elements by name, by symbol, and by atomic number are also available.
Compound
A compound is a substance with a particular ratio of atoms of particular chemical elements which determines its composition, and a particular organization which determines chemical properties. For example, water is a compound containing hydrogen and oxygen in the ratio of two to one, with the oxygen between the hydrogens, and an angle of 104.5° between them. Compounds are formed and interconverted by chemical reactions.
Substance
A chemical substance is a kind of matter with a definite composition and set of properties. Strictly speaking, a mixture of compounds, elements or compounds and elements is not a chemical substance, but it may be called a chemical. Most of the substances we encounter in our daily life are some kind of mixture, e.g. air, alloys, biomass etc.
Nomenclature of substances is a critical part of the language of chemistry. Generally it refers to a system for naming chemical compounds. Earlier in the history of chemistry substances were given name by their discoverer, which often led to some confusion and difficulty. However, today the IUPAC system of chemical nomenclature allows chemists to specify by name specific compounds amongst the infinite variety of possible chemicals. The standard nomenclature of chemical substances is set by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). There are well-defined systems in place for naming chemical species. Organic compounds are named according to the organic nomenclature system.[25] Inorganic compounds are named according to the inorganic nomenclature system.[26] In addition the Chemical Abstracts Service has devised a method to index chemical substance. In this scheme each chemical substance is identifiable by a numeric number known as CAS registry number.
Molecule
A molecule is the smallest indivisible portion, beside an atom, of a pure chemical substance that has its unique set of chemical properties, that is, its potential to undergo a certain set of chemical reactions with other substances. Molecules can exist as electrically neutral units unlike ions. Molecules are typically a set of atoms bound together by covalent bonds, such that the structure is electrically neutral and all valence electrons are paired with other electrons either in bonds or in lone pairs.
One of the main characteristic of a molecule is its geometry often called its structure. While the structure of diatomic, triatomic or tetra atomic molecules may be trivial, (linear, angular pyramidal etc.) the structure of polyatomic molecules, that are constituted of more than six atoms (of several elements) can be crucial for its chemical nature.
Mole
A mole is the amount of a substance that contains as many elementary entities
(atoms, molecules or ions) as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram (or 12 grams) of carbon-12, where the carbon-12 atoms are unbound, at rest and in their
ground state.[27] This number is known as the Avogadro constant, and is
determined empirically. The currently accepted value is 6.02214179(30)×1023 mol-1 (2007 CODATA). It is much like the term "a dozen"
in that it is an absolute number (having no units) and can describe any type of elementary object, although the mole's use is
usually limited to measurement of
The number of moles of a substance in one liter of a solution is known as its molarity. Molarity is the common unit used to express the concentration of a solution in physical chemistry.
Ions and salts
An ion is a charged species, an atom or a molecule, that has lost or gained one or more electrons. Positively charged cations (e.g. sodium cation Na+) and negatively charged anions (e.g. chloride Cl−) can form a crystalline lattice of neutral salts (e.g. sodium chloride NaCl). Examples of polyatomic ions that do not split up during acid-base reactions are hydroxide (OH−) and phosphate (PO43−).
Ions in the gaseous phase is often known as plasma.
Phase
In addition to the specific chemical properties that distinguish different chemical classifications chemicals can exist in several phases. For the most part, the chemical classifications are independent of these bulk phase classifications; however, some more exotic phases are incompatible with certain chemical properties. A phase is a set of states of a chemical system that have similar bulk structural properties, over a range of conditions, such as pressure or temperature. Physical properties, such as density and refractive index tend to fall within values characteristic of the phase. The phase of matter is defined by the phase transition, which is when energy put into or taken out of the system goes into rearranging the structure of the system, instead of changing the bulk conditions.
Sometimes the distinction between phases can be continuous instead of having a discrete boundary, in this case the matter is considered to be in a supercritical state. When three states meet based on the conditions, it is known as a triple point and since this is invariant, it is a convenient way to define a set of conditions.
The most familiar examples of phases are solids, liquids, and gases. Many substances exhibit multiple solid phases. For example, there are three phases of solid iron (alpha, gamma, and delta) that vary based on temperature and pressure. A principal difference between solid phases is the crystal structure, or arrangement, of the atoms. Less familiar phases include plasmas, Bose-Einstein condensates and fermionic condensates and the paramagnetic and ferromagnetic phases of magnetic materials. While most familiar phases deal with three-dimensional systems, it is also possible to define analogs in two-dimensional systems, which has received attention for its relevance to systems in biology.
Chemical bond
A chemical bond is a concept for understanding how atoms stick together in molecules. It may be visualized as the multipole balance between the positive charges in the nuclei and the negative charges oscillating about them.[28] More than simple attraction and repulsion, the energies and distributions characterize the availability of an electron to bond to another atom. These potentials create the interactions which holds together atoms in molecules or crystals. In many simple compounds, Valence Bond Theory, the Valence Shell Electron Pair Repulsion model (VSEPR), and the concept of oxidation number can be used to predict molecular structure and composition. Similarly, theories from classical physics can be used to predict many ionic structures. With more complicated compounds, such as metal complexes, valence bond theory fails and alternative approaches, primarily based on principles of quantum chemistry such as the molecular orbital theory, are necessary. See diagram on electronic orbitals.
Chemical reaction
Chemical reaction is a concept related to the transformation of a chemical substance through its interaction with another, or as a result of its interaction with some form of energy. A chemical reaction may occur naturally or carried out in a laboratory by chemists in specially designed vessels which are often laboratory glassware. It can result in the formation or dissociation of molecules, that is, molecules breaking apart to form two or more smaller molecules, or rearrangement of atoms within or across molecules. Chemical reactions usually involve the making or breaking of chemical bonds. Oxidation, reduction, dissociation, acid-base