Acid-base concepts Lavoisier

The term, acid, was at first used by Boyle in the 17th century. It was based on the following phenomena acids are materials that change the color of certain plant extracts and that dissolve limestone [1]. Glauber, Lavoisier, Davy, Liebig and Arrhenius further developed the acid-base concepts, which were based on the knowledge of the time and which were dominated by information about certain phenomena or substances (see Fig. 7.2). 

Boyle (1661) attempted to provide a more definite concept and attributed the sour taste of acids to sharp-edged acid particles. Lemery, another supporter of the corpuscular theory of chemistry, had similar views and considered that acid-base reactions were the result of the penetration of sharp acid particles into porous bases (Walden, 1929 Finston Rychtman, 1982). However, the first widely accepted theory was that of Lavoisier who in 1 111 pronounced that oxygen was the universal acidifying principle (Crosland, 1973 Walden, 1929 Day Selbin, 1969 Finston Rychtman, 1982). An acid was defined as a compound of oxygen with a non-metal. 

This conception of acids was actually Lavoisier s theory, which Berthollet never accepted. As we will see later, much of the elegance of the table s classification tested on this strange understanding of acids. Acids of the same acidifiable base but of different degree of saturation are counted as one acid. 

Two main contributors to electrochemical theory were Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) in 1806 and Jons Jakob Berzelius (1779-1848) (Fig. 3.34) starting in 1811. Dualism was the basis of electrochemical theory. Oxygen, according to Lavoisier, was the central element in the system, so much so that he defined an acid as a compound of a radical with oxygen. Davy extended this concept by showing that a base was a compound of a metal with oxygen, and Berzelius (1779-1848) completed the dualistic system by assuming that, in all cases, a salt was a compound of an acid... 

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