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Antoine Lavoisier Research Paper

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Why Lavoisier is famous:
Antoine Lavoisier revolutionized chemistry. He named the elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; discovered oxygen’s role in combustion and respiration; established that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen; discovered that sulfur is an element, and helped continue the transformation of chemistry from a qualitative science into a quantitative one. He created a new form of nomenclature which is the skeleton of today’s Periodic Table, and he famously proved the theory of phlogiston incorrect and replaced it with the law of conservation of mass and his theory of oxygenation (Holmes, introduction).
Early and Social Life
Antoine Lavoisier, born in 1743 to a wealthy family of French aristocrats, grew up expected to …show more content…

Because a combustible substance such as charcoal lost weight when it burned, chemists reasoned that this change was due to the loss of its phlogiston component to the air. However In experiments with phosphorus and sulfur, both of which burned readily, Lavoisier showed that they gained weight by combining with air. Up until then, scientists couldn’t explain why tin gained weight when it was burned; if it was releasing phlogiston, it should lose weight. Lavoisier realized that there was no way phlogiston could have a negative mass and set out to prove that combustion was caused by something else. He heated Mercury until calx formed, then he heated the calx until it gave off a clear gas. Lavoisier realized combustion resulted from a chemical reaction with this gas – not some flammable mystery element called phlogiston. He dubbed the gas “oxygen” – a name that referred to its ability to create acids …show more content…

As a textbook, the Traité incorporated the foundations of modern chemistry. It spelled out the influence of heat on chemical reactions, the nature of gases, the reactions of acids and bases to form salts, and the apparatus used to perform chemical experiments. For the first time, the Law of the Conservation of Mass was defined, with Lavoisier asserting that "... in every operation an equal quantity of matter exists both before and after the operation"(Lavoisier). The most striking feature of the Traité was its "Table of Simple Substances," the first modern listing of the then-known elements (the skeleton of the modern Periodic

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