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History of Chemistry

  

History of Chemistry

       Chemistry is a branch of science that has been around for a long time. In fact, chemistry is known to date back to as far as the prehistoric times. Due to the amount of time chemistry takes up on the timeline, the science is split into four general chronological categories. The four categories are: prehistoric times - beginning of the Christian era (black magic), beginning of the Christian era - end of 17th century (alchemy), end of 17th century - mid 19th century (traditional chemistry) and mid 19th century - present (modern chemistry).

                              

         The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis of the various branches of chemistry. Examples include extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze.

        The era of the ancient Greeks that we have any record of how people tried to explain the chemical changes they observed and used. At that time, natural objects were thought to consist of only four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Then, in the fourth century BC, two Greek philosophers, Democritus and Leucippus, suggested that matter was not infinitely divisible into smaller particles but instead consisted of fundamental, indivisible particles called atoms. Unfortunately, these early philosophers did not have the technology to test their hypothesis. They would have been unlikely to do so in any case because the ancient Greeks did not conduct experiments or use the scientific method. They believed that the nature of the universe could be discovered by rational thought alone.

                                    

      Over the next two millennia, alchemists, who engaged in a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, achieved many advances in chemistry. Their major goal was to convert certain elements into others by a process they called transmutation. In particular, alchemists wanted to find a way to transform cheaper metals into gold. Although most alchemists did not approach chemistry systematically and many appear to have been outright frauds, alchemists in China, the Arab kingdoms, and medieval Europe made major contributions, including the discovery of elements such as quicksilver (mercury) and the preparation of several strong acids.

https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/General_Chemistry/Book%3A_Chemistry_(Averill_and_Eldredge)/01%3A_Introduction_to_Chemistry/1.4_A_Brief_History_of_Chemistry

    In the above link explained the following.

  1. Brief History of Chemistry
  2. Modern Chemistry
  3. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)
  4. The Atomic Theory of Matter
  5. The Law of Multiple Proportions
  6. Avogadro’s Hypothesis

 

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