Questions tagged [chemistry]
For questions about the study of chemical reactions, dynamics and related phenomena
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History and origin of the Iso-, Sec-, Tert- and Neo- prefixes?
I have studied the prefixes "Iso-", "Sec-", "Tert-" and "Neo-" for a long time in chemistry but wonder where they originate from i.e. where is the place (the ...
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When did stoichiometry begin to be taught in U.S. high schools?
Stoichiometry, "the quantitative relationship between two or more substances especially in processes involving physical or chemical change" (Merriam-Webster), is currently a major part of the U.S. ...
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Who is Hræðraford, the "learned clerk" "writing in modern chemical Latin"?
Truesdell, C. Rational Thermodynamics. New York, NY: Springer New York, 1984. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5206-1, p. 41 says:
… in the numerous papers and books whose titles and topics ...
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A reason for why Leucippus isn't credited the original "atomist" in the norm?
His exact contributions are difficult to disentangle from those of his mentor Leucippus, as they are often mentioned together in texts. Their speculation on atoms, taken from Leucippus, bears a ...
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Different sign conventions in thermodynamics different for physics and chemistry
Why are the sign conventions of work done in thermodynamics different for physics and chemistry?
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Did C.S Peirce make any noteworthy contributions to physics or chemistry?
According to this article
Peirce was the first to experimentally tie a unit, the meter, to an
absolute standard, the wavelength of a spectral line
Did C.S Peirce make any other noteworthy ...
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Are there substances that were initially thought to be elements but are actually compounds?
I am wondering what are good examples of substances that were initially thought to be elements but then were found out to be compounds. How exactly were these substances found to be compounds?
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Was carbon dioxide also called carbonic acid historically?
I am reading the classic paper by Thomas Andrews, in which he discovered the critical point.
The gas he used in his experiments is called by him 'carbonic acid'. By its critical temperature being 31....
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What is the etymology of lower case p as the operator for the negative of the common logarithm?
In high school we were taught that the formula for pH is the negative of the common logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration: pH = -log[H+].
It wasn't until I took organic chemistry that the "acid ...
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Did the medieval Islamic scholar al-Tusi state the principle of conservation of mass?
This article: Farid Alakbarli, A 13th-Century Darwin? Tusi's Views on Evolution, Azerbaijan International (2001) claims that Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (13th century) stated an early version of the law of ...
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How did the early chemists make a connection between gram formula weight with 1 mole and Avogadro's number?
According to one historian Mustafa Sarikaya's article in Foundations of Chemistry DOI 10.1007/s10698-011-9128-7, the mole concept was introduced to chemistry earlier than Avogadro’s number. The mole ...
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Most known teachers of specific branch of Science
After acquainting myself with the works of Richard Feynman in Physics: " The Feynman Lectures on Physics" and partially with the works of Donald Knuth in Programming: "The Art of Computer Programming",...
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Are there any records of the history for the development of speculum alloy?
I am curious if anyone has seen any records on how this alloy was first developed or perhaps accidentally discovered?
One could ask a similar question for any alloy but since this is peculiar in ...
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What ever happened to the methylphenidate synthesiser and his family?
Leandro Panizzon 1 2 3 synthesised methylphenidate or something like that back in 1944. Ritalin is named after his wife Rita.
He doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia page or anything. What happened to ...
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How and when did scientists first determine that hydrogen was the lightest element?
Cavendish first isolated hydrogen and recognized it for what it was; Lavoisier realized that water consisted of hydrogen and oxygen; Dalton used hydrogen as the basis for relative atomic weights by ...
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How did they explain the radiation from hot objects at different wavelengths before the concept of atom was widely accepted?
I was reading about blackbody radiation and came across the following quote.
Planck did not believe in atoms, nor did he think the second law of
thermodynamics should be statistical because ...
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Was the wide use of mercury in experiments in the 19th century related to alchemy?
We know that Newton's hair samples showed high level of mercury and of course he used mercury like crazy in his alchemy experiments (as did many/all alchemists not just in the west but also China) and ...
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When was mercury given its name?
The Wikipedia page for mercury says that it was named after the Roman god because of his speed and mobility. When did the name mercury start to be used to designate the metal?
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Did tobacco smoke confound the results of an experiment by entering a reaction with the subject of study?
I dimly remember watching a popular sciencie movie that mentioned an experiment conducted by a pair of great physisicists (Einstein was one of them, unless my memory is playing tricks on me) that had ...
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How did the early chemists determine the atomic weight of hydrogen?
In early history, the relative atomic weight of hydrogen was assigned as 1 (exactly) and all other elements were compared against hydrogen. What is difficult to find who determined the absolute atomic ...
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Were scientific discoveries ever inspired by art?
We can often see art that is influenced by science, be it in paintings, music, novels or movies. But has any idea from the arts ever influenced a scientist to come up with a new discovery or idea?
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Element classification by Döbereiner and Newland (law of octaves)
I have been recently studying periodic classification. I am having some confusion regarding old periodic classification.
Newland's law of octaves
In that you can see, in the 4th horizontal line, ...
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Origins of molecular orbital diagrams?
Does anyone remember who proposed molecular diagrams for simple molecules as taught today in most general chemistry texts? I cannot access Hund's original article, however, Mulliken's early articles ...
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Why not proton volt instead of $eV$?
Why is eV used instead of proton V even if they would
give the same value?
I have this view: from electrochemistry's Faraday's law,
scientists first calculated the charge of an electron. Then,
they ...
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What values of Avogadro's Number did Jean Perrin come up with?
I am currently plundering the contents of the $1969$ reprint of the 2nd edition of Data and Formulae for Engineering Students published by Pergamon International (authors J.C. Anderson, D.M. Hum, B.G. ...
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Earliest known usage of letter gamma "Γ" for reducible representation in group theory
Does any know the earliest known usage of the Greek letter gamma for showing a reducible representation of a group? This symbolism is commonly used in character tables in chemical applications of ...
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History of word gram-atom / gram-molecule?
The terms "gram-atom / gram-molecule" are obsolete nowadays in chemistry and got replaced by the concept of "mole/ Avogadro Number". But recently, I encountered a question that can ...
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Why are the terms electrophile/nucleophile used? Are they not identical to Lewis acids/bases?
My understanding is that the above pairs of terms are identical in definition, indicating acceptors/donors of an electron pair. So, why are both used?
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When was the term "Sparingly soluble" first introduced in chemistry?
This question is inspired from: Why do we call salts such as AgCl sparingly soluble?
The extent of solubility can be expressed as descriptive terms. U.S. Pharmacopoeia has made the following ...
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What is the difference between chemico-chemists and physico-chemists according to Van't Hoff?
“Whereas the chemico-chemists always find in industry a beautiful field of gold-laden soil, the physico-chemists stand somewhat farther off, especially those who seek only the greatest dilution, for ...
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How did the theories of Lavoisier, Davy, Arrhenius then Bronsted & Lowry come about?
What scientific experimentations, methods of thinking, ideas and so forth necessitate each individual definition of their acids / bases?
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What is the iodine fax process mentioned in Vannevar Bush's "As we may think"?
What is the iodine fax process mentioned in Vannevar Bush's "As we may think"?
Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been ...
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Were molecules called atoms in the 19th century?
E.g. a quote from Justus von Liebig, 17th Chemical Letter, 1858, in German:
Wir können ein Stück Zucker, auch wenn wir es noch so fein reiben, nicht flüssig machen, noch viel weniger können wir durch ...
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In JJ Thomson's cathode ray experiment I need values for the electric field and magnetic field when net force on the cathode beam = 0
I asked here as well https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/177889/in-jj-thomsons-cathode-ray-experiment-why-is-effects-of-gravity-on-electron-not
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/...
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Why didn't Boyle made a correlation between V and T of a gas (and similarly between P and T)?
I was just reading about The Gas Laws of Boyle, Charles and Avogadro from a general college book Chemistry (7th edition, Zumdahl&Zumdahl).
Boyle was the one who discovered a correlation between ...
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Hydrogen electrode and its electrode potential
In electrochemistry, all electrode potentials are quoted with reference to the standard hydrogen electrode. Its value is assigned to be 0 volts. I have been searching for the origin of this convention ...
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How did Thomson claim that charge on hydrogen ion was equal to charge on electron without knowing charge on electron?
From "The Electron" by J. J. Thomson, published in The Scientific Monthly Vol. 20, No. 2 (Feb., 1925), pp. 113-115
https://www.jstor.org/stable/7115
[Continued discussion] previously ...
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Was the value of the mole invented or discovered in chemistry?
For example, $\pi$ is not an invention, it is a discovery which was natural, that is ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. But when we define a meter it is not a natural value it is ...
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Kekulé and his discovery of benzene
“I was sitting writing at my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire, and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the ...
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Is there info on how Mayans invented hard rubber?
I know they had balls from the rubber trees mixed with morning glory flowers. A technology that was lost when the European colonizers came. But was there any info on who made this discovery and how?
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First time equilibrium notation was used
I was wondering when was the first time that a chemist wrote a chemical equilibrium with the $\rightleftharpoons$ symbol. And if it was before or after Arrhenius's dissociation theory.
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When was the hydrogen's absolute mass found first in history?
When was hydrogen's absolute mass i.e, in Kg, was found for the first time.
What method was used and what information from earlier researches were used for it?
Also was there any method at that time ...
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Who coined the term "sulphuretted hydrogen"?
Hydrogen sulfide was previously named "sulphuretted hydrogen" but I can't find the person who named/coined it. Although Carl Wilhelm Scheele is credited to have discovered and isolated the ...
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What molecule's models might Linus Pauling be holding up in this photo? Perhaps something akin to pentagonal dodecahedrane, or could they be viruses?
The Chemistry SE question What dodecahedral molecule is Linus Pauling likely holding in this photograph? Does it have 40 carbon atoms? begins:
The video Quasicrystals ; Prof. Daniel Shechtman ; Nobel ...
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Books on history of biochemistry
I am looking for books on the history of biochemistry. Searching online there are some short articles that can be found, which just mention a few highlights, but I haven't really found more ...
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How did Faraday determine the Faraday's constant?
Here is the reference. I'm wondering how he experimentally proceeded to derive the fact the if we pass 96485 Coulombs through a solution, then 1 gram equivalent of substance is electrolyzed.
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Is it a historical coincidence that relative atomic weights by chemical methods and mass spectrometry are very close?
The concept of relative atomic weight originated from measuring the combining weight of hydrogen with a certain element. In the simplification process H was taken as unity (18th, 19th and 20th century)...
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In the old days, how did chemists trap and measure gases?
The old days being roughly 1600 - 1850, the time when chemistry and the nature of the elements was being investigated empirically.
For example, hydrogen gas was discovered by Robert Boyle in 1671 ...
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What is the first instance in which Mendeleev published a long-form table as compared with his 8-column table of 1869?
Mendeleev is famous for having published his first periodic table in 1869. This was a short-form or 8-column table.
He also published a number of 18 column periodic tables. I am asking for ...
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What books did Lavoisier read?
I am interested in Antoine Lavoisier's intellectual formation/background.
Is there any available list of the books which Antoine Lavoisier read, especially ones on science/mathematics/philosophy (even ...