Elements ancient Greece

The concept that all matter, however complicated it may be, is made up of some combination of only a few basic substances began in ancient Greece. The Greek philosophers believed there were four such elements fire, water, earth, and air. They thought that all substances were combinations of these four basic things. 

The high abundance of aluminum has resulted in a multitude of apphcations for the element and its compounds. Aluminum derives its name from alum, the double sulfate KA1(S04)2-12H20, which was used medicinally as an astringent in ancient Greece and Rome. Today, aluminum plays an important role as the pure metal and its alloys while its compounds have extensive applications as structural and medical ceramics, electronic and optical materials, catalysts, ionic conductors, coagulants for water purification, and reagents for preparation of other chemicals. " ... 

Questioning what something is made of was a common practice even among the philosophers of ancient Greece. They believed that everything was made of one or, at most, a few elemental substances (elements). Some believed this substance to be water, others thought it was air, and still others believed there were four elements—fire, air, water, and earth. 

A few thousand years ago, primitive chemistry focused mostly on converting one substance into another. The word chemistry itself is arguably traced to the name of a region of ancient Egypt where such transformation attempts were practiced. Over the centuries, philosophers tried to come to terms with the growing variety of known substances. They postulated the role of fundamental entities that could not be broken down further but formed simple materials when combined. By the time of ancient Greece, Democritus, Leucippus, and Empedocles expounded the nature of matter in terms of constituent elements, the simple substances—earth, air, fire, and... 

Another example of the case study approach used in the course involves the evolution of scientific ideas regarding matter. As far as we know, the earliest concept of an atom dates to Democritus of ancient Greece. His philosophical reasoning led him to conclude that there must be a smallest un-cuttable (a-tom) piece of any given substance. At the start of the 19 century, no one had any defensible ideas about the structure of matter or how elements combine to make compounds. The theory that answered these questions came from John Dalton. He reasoned that if only certain specific ratios of substances combine, it must be due to fundamental units of matter, the atoms, which combine in that same ratio. Some of his original concepts were modified by subsequent scientists to account for new observations, but his basic idea led to numerous discoveries that provided a better understanding of the nature of matter. 

While many civilizations learned how to make dyes and pigments, or ferment fruit into wine, the earliest theories about atoms and what makes up the chemical world came from ancient Greece and India. Leucippus in Greece and Kanada in India both came up with the idea that there must be a small, indivisible part of matter. The Greek word for uncuttable is atomos, clearly the root of the modern term atom. Kanada s term for this similar concept was paramanu or simply anu, the indivisible element of matter. 

Gay Studies has appropriated Athenian male prostitution as a significant element in the erotics of male culture in ancient Greece (Halperin 1995 3), and has used those erotics as an important basis for the social construction of homosexuality (Mohr 1992 222). 

Ancient philosophers in Greece, India, China, and Japan speculated that all matter was composed of four or five elements. The Greeks thought that these were fire, air, earth, and water. Indian philosophers and the Greek Aristotle also thought a fifth element—"aether" or "quintessence"—filled all of empty space. 

The element magnesium is named after a region in Greece called Magnesia in ancient times. Today the same region is called Manisa. Compounds of... 

HISTORY. Centuries ago, the ancient Romans claimed that magnesia alba (white magnesium salts from the district of Magnesia in Greece, from which the element was eventually named) cured many ailments. But, it was not until 1808 that Sir Humphrey Davy, the British chemist, announced that he had isolated the element, magnesium. 

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