I went to St. John’s College in Annapolis for a visit for a day and missed a lot of the lecture prior to the days of my visit, and they specialize in doing old school science experiments following original lab journals.
It was fascinating.
They had a lab assignment in which they replicated the original experiment used to demonstrate how water was H2O, by turning it into steam, running it through charcoal (carbon), and igniting it out the other side in a flask, to which we “realized” you can determine some gasses based on the sound they produce when they ignite. Hydrogen “chirps”.
Since I was only there for one day I didn’t get to learn the bulk of the material. Instead, I just learned how to replicate the building and initiation of the experiment.
I wonder to this day: how did the first scientist use what he had to determine that it was 2 parts hydrogen, instead of (let’s say) three parts hydrogen (for example)?
Thanks!
In: 4
Stoichiometry and a truly staggering mountain of logical deductions and algebraic calculations. The origin of all this was a man named Jeremias Benjamin Richter realizing that when you split water into hydrogen and oxygen you always got a ratio of 8 to 1 by weight. He did other reactions such as iron and oxygen and weighed the result. By making vast tables of chemical reactions the world of chemistry was eventually able to deduce how much every element weighed and realized that the mass of hydrogen produced by splitting water couldn’t be 1 part but 2.
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