History of chemistry essay

History of chemistry essay

History of Chemistry Introduction: Humans have always been very curios creatures. The have always wondered about what they are and why they are here. Our limited knowledge of the environment has always urged for new things to be discovered. The desire to understand the world better has made people search for rational answers, for principles and laws Learning the history of chemistry will help students understand the major topics and themes involved in this branch of science. This lesson provides a series of essay topics designed to encourage History of Chemistry. The Greek scholar Empedocles, a Sicilian local, progresses a postulation unknown until the seventeenth century in Europe. He expresses that all issue contains four essential components earth, wind, fire, and water-in various extents

The History of Chemistry Essay - Words | Bartleby

The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include the discovery of fire, extracting metals from oresmaking pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wineextracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfumerendering fat into soapmaking glassand making alloys like bronze.

The protoscience of chemistry, alchemywas unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by performing experiments and recording the results, alchemists set the stage for modern chemistry. The distinction began to emerge when a clear differentiation was made between chemistry and alchemy by History of chemistry essay Boyle in his work The Sceptical Chymist While both alchemy and chemistry are concerned with matter and its transformations, chemists are seen as applying scientific method to their work.

The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamicsespecially through the work of Willard Gibbs. A ,year-old ochre -processing workshop was found at Blombos Cave in South Africa. It indicates that early humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry.

Paintings drawn by early humans consisting of early humans mixing animal blood with other liquids found on cave walls also indicate a small knowledge of chemistry. The earliest recorded metal employed by humans seems to be goldwhich can be found free or "native", history of chemistry essay.

Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, around 40, BC, history of chemistry essay. Silvercoppertin and meteoric iron can also be found native, allowing a limited amount of metalworking in ancient cultures, history of chemistry essay. Arguably the first chemical reaction used in a controlled manner was fire. However, for millennia fire was seen simply as a mystical force that could transform one substance into another burning wood, or boiling water while producing heat and light.

Fire affected many aspects of early societies. These ranged from the simplest facets of everyday life, such as cooking and habitat heating and lighting, history of chemistry essay, to more advanced uses, such as for making pottery and bricks and melting of metals to make tools. It was fire that led to the discovery of glass and the purification of metals; this was followed by the rise of metallurgy.

Certain metals can be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire: notably tinlead and at a higher temperature copper. This process is known as smelting. The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 6th and 5th millennia BC, and was found in the archaeological sites of MajdanpekYarmovac and Plocnikall three in Serbia. To date, the earliest copper smelting is found at the Belovode site; [8] these examples include a copper axe from BC belonging to the Vinča culture.

However, as often happens in the study of prehistoric times, the ultimate beginnings cannot be clearly defined and new discoveries are ongoing. These first metals were single elements, or else combinations as naturally occurred. By combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze.

This was a major technological shift which began the Bronze Age about BC. The Bronze Age was a period in human cultural development when the most advanced metalworking at least in systematic and widespread use included techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of copper ores, and then smelting those ores to cast bronze. These naturally occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. After the Bronze Age, the history of metallurgy was marked by armies seeking better weaponry.

States in Eurasia prospered when they made the superior alloys, which, in turn, made better armor and better weapons. The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more difficult than copper or tin. While iron is not better suited for tools than bronze until steel was discoverediron ore is much more abundant and common than either copper or tin, and therefore more often available locally, with no need to trade for it.

Iron working appears to have been invented by the Hittites in about BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of extracting and working iron was a key factor history of chemistry essay the success of the Philistines. The Iron Age refers to the advent of iron working ferrous metallurgy.

Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a wide variety of past cultures and civilizations. These include the ancient and medieval kingdoms and empires of the Middle East and Near East, ancient Iranancient Egypthistory of chemistry essay, ancient Nubiaand Anatolia TurkeyAncient NokCarthagethe Greeks and Romans of ancient Europe, medieval Europe, history of chemistry essay, ancient and medieval China, ancient and medieval India, ancient and medieval Japan, amongst others.

Many applications, practices, and devices associated with or involved in metallurgy were established in ancient China, such as the innovation of the blast furnacecast ironhydraulic -powered trip hammersand double-acting piston bellows.

Philosophical attempts to rationalize why different substances have different properties color, density, smellexist in different states gaseous, liquid, and solidand react in a different manner when exposed to environments, for example to water or fire or temperature changes, led ancient philosophers to postulate the first theories on nature and chemistry.

The history of such philosophical theories that relate to chemistry can probably be traced back to every single ancient civilization. The common aspect in all these theories was the attempt to identify a small number of primary classical elements that make up all the various substances in nature. Around BC, Empedocles stated that all matter is made up of four elemental substances : earth, fire, air and water.

The early theory of atomism can be traced back to ancient Greece and ancient India. Leucippus also declared that atoms were the most indivisible part of matter.

This coincided with a similar declaration by Indian philosopher Kanada in his Vaisheshika sutras around the same time period. What Kanada declared by sutra, Democritus declared by philosophical musing. Both suffered from a lack of empirical data. Without scientific proof, the existence of atoms was easy to deny. Aristotle opposed the existence of atoms in BC. Earlier, in BC, a Greek text attributed to Polybus argued that the human body is composed of four humours, history of chemistry essay.

Around BC, Epicurus postulated a universe of indestructible atoms in which man himself is responsible for achieving a balanced life. With the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience, the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius [15] wrote De rerum natura The Nature of Things [16] in 50 BC, history of chemistry essay. In the work, Lucretius presents the principles of atomism ; the nature of the mind and soul ; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena.

Much of the early development of purification methods is described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. He tried to explain those methods, as well as making acute observations of the state of many minerals, history of chemistry essay. The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed primarily by the Persian - Arab alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān and was rooted in the classical elements of Greek tradition. They were seen by early alchemists as idealized expressions of irreducible components of the universe [18] and are of larger consideration [ clarification needed ] within philosophical alchemy.

The three metallic principles sulphur to flammability or combustion, mercury to volatility and stability, and salt to history of chemistry essay became the tria prima of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He reasoned that Aristotle's four-element theory history of chemistry essay in bodies as three principles.

Paracelsus saw these principles as fundamental and justified them by recourse to the description of how wood burns in fire. Mercury included the cohesive principle, so that when it left history of chemistry essay wood in smoke the wood fell apart.

Smoke described the volatility the mercurial principlethe heat-giving flames described flammability sulphurand the remnant ash described solidity salt.

Alchemy is defined by the Hermetic quest for the philosopher's stonethe study of which is steeped in symbolic mysticism, and differs greatly from modern science. Alchemy and chemistry share an interest in the composition and properties of matter, and until the 18th century they were not separate disciplines.

The term chymistry has been used to describe the blend of alchemy and chemistry that existed before that time. The earliest Western alchemists, who lived in the first centuries of the common era, invented chemical apparatus. The bain-marieor water bath, is named for Mary the Jewess.

Her work also gives the first history of chemistry essay of the tribikos and kerotakis. During the Renaissance, exoteric alchemy remained popular in the form of Paracelsian iatrochemistrywhile spiritual alchemy flourished, realigned to its PlatonicHermetic, and Gnostic roots.

Consequently, the symbolic quest for the philosopher's stone was not superseded by scientific advances, and was still the domain of respected scientists and doctors until the early 18th century. Early modern alchemists who are renowned for their scientific contributions include Jan Baptist van Helmonthistory of chemistry essay, Robert Boyleand Isaac Newton. In the Islamic Worldthe Muslims were translating the works of ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers into Arabic and were experimenting with scientific ideas.

The Arabic works attributed to him introduced a systematic classification of chemical substances, and provided instructions for deriving an inorganic compound sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride from organic substances such as plants, blood, and hair by chemical means. Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī described a version of the conservation of massnoting that a body of matter is able to change but is not able to disappear.

There were several problems with alchemy, as seen from today's standpoint. There was no systematic naming scheme for new compounds, and the language was esoteric and vague to the point that the terminologies meant different things to different people. In fact, according to The Fontana History of Chemistry Brock, :. The language of alchemy soon developed an arcane and secretive technical vocabulary designed to conceal information from the uninitiated.

To a large degree, this language is incomprehensible to us today, though it is apparent that readers of Geoffery Chaucer 's Canon's Yeoman's Tale or audiences of Ben Jonson 's The Alchemist were able to construe it sufficiently to laugh at it, history of chemistry essay. Chaucer's tale exposed the more fraudulent side of alchemy, especially the manufacture of counterfeit gold from cheap substances. Less than a century earlier, Dante Alighieri also demonstrated an awareness of this fraudulence, causing him to consign all alchemists to the Inferno in his writings.

Soon afterwards, inthe Avignon Pope John XXII ordered all alchemists to leave France for making counterfeit money. A law was passed in England in which made the "multiplication of metals" punishable by death. Despite these and other apparently extreme measures, alchemy did not die. Royalty and privileged classes still sought to discover the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life for themselves. There was also no agreed-upon scientific method for making experiments reproducible.

Indeed, many alchemists included in their methods irrelevant information such as history of chemistry essay timing of the tides or the phases of the moon. The esoteric nature and codified vocabulary of alchemy appeared to be more useful in concealing the fact that they could not be sure of very much at all.

As early as the 14th century, cracks seemed to grow in the facade of alchemy; and people became sceptical.

Practical attempts to history of chemistry essay the refining of ores and their extraction to smelt metals was an important source of information for early chemists in the 16th century, among them Georg Agricola —who published his great work De history of chemistry essay metallica in His work describes the highly developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time.

His approach removed the mysticism associated with the subject, creating the practical base upon which others could build. The work describes the many kinds of furnace used to smelt ore, and stimulated interest in minerals and their composition. It is no coincidence that he gives numerous references to the earlier author, Pliny the Elder and his Naturalis Historia. Agricola has been described as the "father of metallurgy", history of chemistry essay. InSir Francis Bacon published The Proficience and Advancement of Learningwhich contains a description of what would later be known as the scientific method.

In Jean Beguin published the Tyrocinium Chymicuman early chemistry textbook, history of chemistry essay, and in it draws the first-ever chemical equation. The Dutch chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont 's work Ortus medicinae was published posthumously in ; the book is cited by some as a major transitional work between alchemy and history of chemistry essay, and as an important influence on Robert Boyle.

The History of Atomic Chemistry: Crash Course Chemistry #37

, time: 9:42

History Of Chemistry Essay

History of Chemistry. The Greek scholar Empedocles, a Sicilian local, progresses a postulation unknown until the seventeenth century in Europe. He expresses that all issue contains four essential components earth, wind, fire, and water-in various extents Words5 Pages. The annals of ChemistryChemistry is the technology associated with composition and framework of materials and for the modifications that materials undergo Learning the history of chemistry will help students understand the major topics and themes involved in this branch of science. This lesson provides a series of essay topics designed to encourage