THE FIRST

CHEMICAL
REVOLUTION
• Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier forever
changed the practice and concepts
of chemistry by forging a new series
of laboratory analyses that would
bring order to the chaotic centuries
of Greek philosophy and medieval
alchemy.
 Beliefs in Chemistry as Lavoisier’s
Time
• Chemistry was still mired in the legacy of the
Greek philosophers. The four elements of
Aristotle — earth, air, fire, and water — had
been slowly modified by the medieval
alchemists, who added their own arcane
language and symbolism.
• Developed by the German scientist Georg
Ernst Stahl early in the 18th century,
phlogiston was a dominant chemical concept of
the time because it seemed to explain so much
in a simple fashion.
The importance of measurements in
experiments
Antoine Lavoisier made careful and
systematic measurementes. He put a
specific amount of mercury (a liquid gray
metal) in a glass flask that he closed and
weighted on a scale. Then, he put the
mercury over an open flame, and after a
few days a red calx was formed.
His results also served as a foundation to
afirm that in the transformation of a
substance into another during a chemical
change, the mass remains constant.
• LAW OF CONSERVATION OF MASS
• Matter, and therefore mass, does not appear and
disappear, but the atoms and molecules that make yp the
substances are arranged differently to form different
substances.

Total number of reactants

=
Total number of products