Elementary Treatise Chemistry

Although Macquer s explanation is correct, A.-L. Lavoisier still held to the more conservative opinion. In his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which was first published in 1789, he explained the formation of potassium carbonate in vegetable ash as follows As the potash is not formed, or at least not liberated, said he, except as the carbon of the plant is converted into carbonic acid by the addition of oxygen, either from the air or from the water, the result is that each molecule of potash, at the moment of its formation, finds itself in contact with a molecule of carbonic acid, and since there is great affinity between these two substances, combination must take place (13). 

Concerning affinity, Lavoisier s evaluation contrasted sharply with his condemnation of the doctrine of chemical principles. Far from regarding it as a dead subject, he appreciated the intensifying interest in affinity as the theoretical frontier of chemistry. It was precisely for this reason that he decided to exclude it from the Traite. The subject of affinity lacked a solid foundation on facts and did not belong to an elementary treatise ... 

Lavoisier formulated the rule that chemical reactions do not alter total mass after finding that reactions in a closed container do not change weight. This disproved the phlogiston theory, and he named Priestley s substance oxygen. He demonstrated that air and water were not elements. He defined an element as a substance that could not be broken down further. He published the first modern chemistry textbook. Elementary Treatise of Chemistry. Lavoisier was executed in the Reign of Terror at the height of the French Revolution. 

Lavoisier s quantitative experiments showed that combustion involved oxygen (which Lavoisier named), not phlogiston. He also discovered that life was supported by a process that also involved oxygen and was similar in many ways to combustion. In 1789 Lavoisier published the first modern chemistry textbook. Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, in which he presented a unified picture of the chemical knowledge assembled up to that time. Unfortunately, in the same year the text was published, the French Revolution broke out. 

Finally, in 1787, Lavoisier together with the French chemists, de Morveau, Ber-thollet and de Fourcroy established in Paris a new chemical nomenclature, that has remained valid until today. Lavoisier wrote in 1789 the Trade elementaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry), the first modem textbook on chemistry, and presented a unified view of new theories of chemistry, containing a clear statement of the law of conservation of mass, and denied the existence of phlogiston. In addition, it contained a list of elements, or substances that could not be broken down further, which included oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphoms, mercury, zinc, and sulfur. 

The first definition of the chemical element, in the modem sense, is due to R. Boyle (1627-1629) in his book Skeptical Chemist, he defined the chemical element as a substance which cannot be decomposed into other substances. So, the elements (simple bodies) are not composed of other substances, but they themselves are the products in which are decomposed, ultimately, all other substances. Boyle did not shown specifically what these items were about, for example, he could not decide if metals or their oxides had a character of an element. On the other hand, the negation, which stay on the basis of his statement, make it uncertain as a practical definition, because even not known the decomposition methods for a substance at a given time (historical epoch), this not necessarily means that such a decomposition is not possible in an arguable future. In any case, the use of the term element, in the sense of elemental substance, i. e., simple substance, was maintained until now, with the note that only its significance was made clear as time passed by. An important step was the transition from the meaning of the element notion as principle, encompassing a collection of properties, to some specific to substance type. Noteworthy, Lavoisier, in his famous Elementary Treatise of Chemistry (1789) included in the simple substances category approximate 40 substances, of which 25 were really elements (Horovitz et al., 2000). 

The foundation of chemistry was constructed by A. de Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry. Lavoisier proposed the law of the conservation of mass stating the mass of an isolated system is maintained as a result of processes acting inside the system, and organized the whole knowledge of earlier chemistry in his book, Traite elementaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry) (1789). Following the law of definite composition (1799) stating a chemical compound always contains exactly the same proportion of elements by mass, suggested by... 

An Elementary Treatise on Chemistry. .. to which is addedy an AppendiXy giving an account of the latest Discoveriesy Liverpool, 1809. 

A Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry, 3 ed., London, 1853 Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, Edinburgh, 1855 A Handbook of Organic Chemistry (enlarged ed. of Outlines of Organic Chemistry) 3 ed. 1852, 4 ed. 1856 Outlines of Chemistry for the Use of Students, 1845, 2 ed. 1847 he collaborated with Liebig in revising Turner s Elements of Chemistry (see p. 227). 

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743-94) French chemist. Lavoisier is frequently referred to as the founder of modern chemistry. Perhaps his most significant contribution was to peform careful quantitative experiments that disproved the PHLOGISTON THEORY of combustion. This led him to establish that oxygen is one of the gases present in air. He also noticed the presence of an inert gas in air, which was subsequently named nitrogen. He summarized his work in the influential book Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, which stated the law of mass conservation in chemical reactions. Lavoisier, who had been a tax farmer, was executed in 1794, in the after-math of the French Revolution. 

One of the most important parts of chemical theory is the division of substances into the two classes elementaiy substances and compounds. This division was achieved in 1787 by the French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), on the basis of the quantitative studies that he had made during the preceding fifteen years of the masses of the substances (reactants and products) involved in chemical reactions. Lavoisier defined a compound as a substance that can be decomposed into two or more other substances, and an elementary substance (or element) as a substance that can not be decomposed. In his Traite Elemen-taire de Clumie [Elementary Treatise on Chemistry], published in 1789. he listed 33 elements, including 10 that had not yet been isolated as elementary substances, but were known as oxides, the compound nature of which was correctly surmised by Lavoisier. Since the discovery of the electron and the atomic nucleus the definitions of elementary substances and compounds have been revised in the ways presented in the following paragraphs. 

In 1789 Antoine Lavoisier published a chemical textbook titled Elementary Treatise on Chemistry. Lavoisier is known as the father of modem chemistry because he was among the first to study chemical reactions carefully. As we saw previously, Lavoisier studied combustion, and by burning substances in closed containers, he was able to establish the law of conservation of mass, which states that matter is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction. 

From this experience, he wrote his most successful work. The Compendium, an elementary treatise on chemistry in two volumes that appeared in new editions in 1819, 1828, and 1833. The work consisted of 100 lessons modeled on the Trade elementaire de chimie (1789) of Lavoisier and Antoine Fran9ois Fourcroy (1755-1809) and Jons Jacob Berzelius s (1779-1848) Ldrbok i Kemien (1808-1818). Although the work was aimed at pharmacy-school students, it contained theoretical material such as the law of definite proportions and atomic theory, as well as practical chemistry. 

One of the best books on the topic is Green Chemistry An Introductory Text by M. Lancaster, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 2002. Its treatment is thorough, but not always in great depth. It is clearly aimed at the complete novice. Chapter 5 of Pollution, Causes, Effects and Control (fourth edition), edited by Roy M. Harrison, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2001, describes the material in a little more depth do not be confused by the careless title of the book Basic Water Treatment by C. Binnie, M. Kimber and G. Smethurst, Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 2002, which is neither an elementary text nor a treatise on treating alkaline water. 

The Treatise on Elementary Chemistry, as published in 1789, was never changed by Lavoisier. Robert Kerr, the English translator of the work says in the preface to the third English edition ... 

For an introduction, see any elementary physics textbook. For more detail relevant to the present work see J.H. Wernick, Treatise on Solid State Chemistry, N.B. Hannay, Ed., Plenum Press, New York, 1975, Vol. 1, Chapter 4 E. Nembach, ibid., Vol. 2, Chapter 7. 

If the chemical reaction is not elementary, derivation of K from rate constonts is still possible but is more complex. See, e.g., T. S. Lee, in Treatise on Analytical Chemistry, I. M. Kolthoff, and P. I. Elving, eds.. Part I, Vol. 1, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1959. 

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