Davy, Humphry aluminum

The mineral petalite was mined as an ore in Sweden. In 1817 Johan August Arfwedson (1792—1841) analyTed this new mineral. After identifying several compounds in the ore, he realized there was a small percentage of the ore that could not be identified. After applying more analytical procedures, he determined it was a new alkali. It turned out that petalite contains hthium aluminum silicate, LiAllSi O lj. In 1818 the first lithium metal was prepared independently by two scientists, Sir Humphry Davy (1778—1892) and W.T. Brande (1788—1866). Lithium was discovered at a time in the early nineteenth century when numerous new elements were discovered and identified by other scientists. Many of these newly named elements were predicted by the use of the periodic table of the chemical elements. 

Sir Humphry Davy isolated the metal in 1808 by the method he had used for calcium and barium (5, 3). In 1924 P. S. Danner of the University of California allowed the oxides of barium and strontium to react with magnesium or aluminum and, upon distilling, obtained both barium and strontium in a high state of purity. His method was a refinement of the one previously used by A. Guntz (33, 34). 

In 1800. William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle decomposed water into hydrogen and oxygen by an electric current supplied by a voltaic pile. Whereas Volta had pruduced electricity from chemical action these experimenters reversed the process and utilized electricity to produce chemical changes. In 1807. Sir Humphry Davy discovered two new elements, potassium and sodium, by the electrolysis of ihe respective solid hydroxides, utilizing a voltaic pile as the source of electric power. These electrolytic processes were the forerunners of the many industrial electrolytic processes used today to obtain aluminum, chlorine, hydrogen, or oxygen, for example, or in die electroplating of metals such as silver or chromium. 

Aluminium was first named (although not isolated) by Sir Humphry Davy, who originally called it alumium (1808) because it was found in alum, a name that had been extant since at least the 14th century. He later called it aluminum (1812), but others soon changed it to aluminium, in order to harmonize it with the many other elements whose... 

Compared with copper, iron, gold, and lead, which were known in antiquity, aluminum is a relative newcomer. Sir Humphry Davy obtained it as an alloy of iron and proved its metallic nature in 1809. It was first prepared in relatively pure form in 1825 by H. C. Oersted through reduction of aluminum chloride with an amalgam of potassium dissolved in mercury,... 

Wohler s other major achievement was his isolation of the element aluminum in 1827. Attempts by chemists Humphry Davy and Berzefius to prepare aluminum from alumina (AI2O3) via electrolytic decomposition had all failed. Wohler employed a chemical approach that included the reduction of anhydrous aluminum chloride by potassium amalgam, followed by treatment with water. It produced a gray powder that Wohler was able to identify as the element aluminum. 

Sir Humphry Davy was an English scientist, who discovered metals such as potassium, sodium, barium, strontium, calcium and magnesium. His most famous invention was a safety lamp for use in coal mines where the highly inflammable gas, methane, is often found. Davy first proposed the name for the element with the symbol Al and called it alumium, but he changed his mind, a few years later, and called it aluminum. Many British users disliked this name, however, because it didn t conform with the ium ending given in the names of metals and adopted the name aluminium. Americans still prefer aluminum, which is why you will see this spelling in their textbooks. 

Michael Faraday discovered the basic laws of electrolysis early in the nineteenth century and was the first to use the word electrolysis. Both Sir Humphry Davy and Robert Bunsen used electrolysis to prepare chemical elements. The development of dynamos based on Faraday s ideas made possible larger currents and opened up industrial uses of electrolysis, most notably the Hall-Heroult process for the production of aluminum around 1886. 

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