1700-1800+clarkeson.charrette

=Back= = = =1700-1800: Math Makes its Way into Chemistry; Conservation of Mass=

Antoine Lavoisier


 August 26, 1743- May 8th 1794 Antoine Lavoisier was born into a prosperous family and was educated at the College des Quatre Nations. Even though he obtained a license to practice law and was expected to follow his father in becoming a lawyer, he began a career in the sciences. After publishing a paper suggesting ways to improve the lighting of streets in Paris, he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Science and took a job with a company that collected taxes for the government. He was also appointed to the Gunpowder Commission and was given a laboratory to work in. Lavoisier was active in trying to remedy social problems in France before the French Revolution, but was arrested and executed for being a member of Farmer's General during the French Revolution. Antoine Lavoisier was the first scientist to formalize the Law of Conservation of Mass after his investigation into the theory of Phlogiston Theory in 1777. He came about to his conclusion by demonstrating that the masses of products of combustion are equal to the masses of the reactants. He is often considered the Father of Modern Chemistry and transformed it from a qualitative to a quantitative science.

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=Charles-Augustin de Coulomb=

[] [] 14 June 1736- 23 August 1806

After serving 9 years as a military engineer in the West Indies, Coulomb retired to a small estate and devoted his life to scientific research. He invented the torsion balance in 1777, which was used to measure the magnitude of electric and magnetic attraction. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb pioneered work in the studies of friction, magnetism, and electricity. Coulomb is perhaps most well known for Coulomb's law. It essentially states that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. Coulomb's law states that the electric force acting on a point charge is found by multiplying Coulomb's constant (k = 9x10⁹ Nm²/C²) by the charges involved, and dividing that product by the distance between them squared. [] [] []

** [] 16 April 1728- 6 December 1799 Joseph Black was born in France to an Irish father and Scottish mother. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh In 1850, Black began research on Magnesia Alba in Glasgow. He performed the first experiments involving the weighing of heated and burnt substances.. He believed "fixed air" was coming off of the burning substance. He found that the burning substance actually lost mass and surmised that the substacne was reacting with the air, and giving off something he called "fixed air." He studied the "fixed air" and found that reactions involving air (gases) did in fact conserve mass. Black is also considered the father of thermal sciences for his work in discovering latent and specific heat. We now know "fixed air" as Carbon Dioxide.
 * Joseph Black

[][[http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Black.html|http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Black.html

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