PowerPoint Presentation

History of the chemistryAll the things that you learn in chemistry have been discovered slowly over time. Sometimes by accident sometimes not. Then these discovery's have to be made into ideas that can be tested (if its to be called science, or just yelled loudly by people if its just to be believed.)Chemistry has both in its history!In the beginning (Greek times)A Greek Philosopher Democritusnoticed, very basically that you can cut stuff up. If you get anything you can break it down into smaller things. UNTILL YOU CANT.Eg sand you cannot cut a gran of sand. He suggested that everything is made up of very small things that can not be cut.Atom = atomos, which means 'that which can't be splitFirst elementsThe Greeks also thought that everything was made of 4 elements (earth, wind, fire and water)Then in the 1600s Alchemy became popular, this was trying to change metals into gold. (if they are all made of 4 elements why not)In trying to do this people started finding true elements proving the Greek idea wrong. Alchemy not chemistryThe alchemists were really just playing with reactions they didnt know what was going on. For example one person heated urine (his own). The reason being he wanted to make gold, wee is golden colour and gold is amazing and so are people! Makes perfect sense.

(he ended up making Phosphorus. Which burns in air) Over time Alchemy changes to chemistryBoyle in 1661 started to break free of alchemy and started down the road of chemistry.The difference is simple really alchemy you want to make gold keep all your ideas and plans secret otherwise everyone will do it.Chemistry how does the world work share everything the more people you have giving it a go the more likely one of use will work it out.

Things can go wrongphlogistonThe idea was simple and obvious, things need something to burn. When you burn wood it turns to ash so wood must be made of an element ash and an element that burns. Further proof if you burn wood then phlogiston would be given into the air. When you burn something in a confined space it stops burning as it has run out of Phlogiston.

So how does burning work? (what do you need for something to burn?If you say you need a match or fire you are a worse scientist than they were!Their ideas followed the data they could see. It just happened to be was wrong. Yours did not even follow the data!The periodic tableEventually the fact that when things burn the gain mass showed that phlogiston was wrong and so normal experiments carried on.Having found around 33 elements Antoine Lavoisier tried to lay them out to make sense of them all. But it didnt really work (he tried to include light and heat!)Finally Mendeleev's managed to work out a table that not only worked predicted future elements!