THE DISCOVERY OF THE CARBON DIOXIDE MOLECULE
Abstract This chapter deals with the appearance of the carbon dioxide molecule on the world stage. The Flemish medical doctor Jean Baptiste van Helmont discovered that something was released when charcoal was burned. He called that a gas, a gas sylvestris, a spirit from the woods, or wild spirit. Ar...
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| Format: | Book Part |
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Oxford University PressOxford
2023
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198869412.003.0003 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/50246108/oso-9780198869412-chapter-3.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract This chapter deals with the appearance of the carbon dioxide molecule on the world stage. The Flemish medical doctor Jean Baptiste van Helmont discovered that something was released when charcoal was burned. He called that a gas, a gas sylvestris, a spirit from the woods, or wild spirit. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the Scotsman Black discovered that a white powder, magnesium alba, when heated would lose air, that was previously held: fixed air (carbon dioxide). Like van Helmont, the German scientist Becher and Stahl realized that in combustion (burning) a substance was released, called by Stahl phlogiston. The Frenchmen Antoine Lavoisier discovered however that not the mysterious phlogiston was released during combustion, but something was taken up. What was taken up, turned out to be oxygen, the discovery of which should probably be credited to both Lavoisier and the Englishman Joseph Priestley. Priestley later also experimented with fermentation and discovered further properties of ‘fixed air’. John Dalton put everything on a modern footing and gave the first accurate description of carbonic acid, composed of one element of carbon and two of oxygen. It was then up to the Russian Dmitri Mendeleyev in 1889, to put the final touch to our chemical understanding by developing the periodic table. Carbon had an atomic weight (relative to hydrogen) of 12, oxygen of 16, so a molecule of carbon dioxide would weigh 44. The structure of carbon dioxide and indeed most of its properties were known. |
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