How This IMPOSSIBLE Theory Led to the Discovery of Oxygen

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@Chemistorian 2 ай бұрын

Go to ground.news/chem for an objective, data-driven way to read the news. Subscribe through my link to save 40% off unlimited access!

@Alfred-Neuman 2 ай бұрын

bro you talk like we are all supposed to know what is oxegen and you dont even explein correctly like come on bro do you think we are all nurds? lol like serious bro you should at least add some clips of fortnite or roblox while you talk to makes it inturesting.

@keyrock177 2 ай бұрын

@@Alfred-Neuman This might be the dumbest comment I've ever read...

@Alfred-Neuman 2 ай бұрын

@@keyrock177 Thanks! :D

@ArcticNemo 2 ай бұрын

Their original logo was related to the electrical symbol for a common reference. I find this a much more positive image than the second logo being drawn to reflect a different meaning, worn down or cut to fine pieces. ...of course, this was accompanied by less utility and closer paywalls 😢

@ewantaylor2758 2 ай бұрын

Phlogiston theory always makes me wonder which of our current scientific models is totally wrong, but explains things well enough that we still haven't caught it.

@jacquiecotillard9699 2 ай бұрын

I feel the same way- that we aren’t missing some inexplicably huge gap in our understanding, but rather our overlapping systems obscure trends that oppose each other. Not to start a whole thing, but the most promising intersectional vector may be theory of mind and body. Scientific materialism’s denial of embodied attention counters the indefinable esoterica of systems like nei gong or qi gong to a standstill, both invalidating each other perfectly. Our limited mastery over the body by science is undeniable, but at no way seeks to enclose that knowledge for immediate use by the embodied. Without these technologies bettering each other collaboratively or even competitively, we are missing out on unimaginable lines of experimentation, for what seems like a simple lack of proper methodology.

@Gary-o9t 2 ай бұрын

All of them are. We cant model anything to the precision of a femto-decimal. So in principle all our models are "wrong" but some are useful for our purposes. Engineers rise up! Praise be to the power of assumptions!

@jacquiecotillard9699 2 ай бұрын

@@Gary-o9t have you seen the recent atto-microscopy developments? We’re getting somewhere, can’t say if that somewhere is “closer” to anything

@mox3909 2 ай бұрын

@@Gary-o9t The Axiom is Dead! Long Live the Axiom!

@brain_snakes 2 ай бұрын

My money is on gravity being the primary force that holds together galaxies and solar systems.

@evan5237 2 ай бұрын

It's always amazing to see how intelligent the scientists and philosophers of the past really were. Purely through logic and observation they created new knowledge that was remarkably close to the actual phenomenon, all without the tools and context we take for granted today. Simply incredible work.

@scottydu81 2 ай бұрын

Our ancestors were not morons! They were just working with far less information

@tippyc2 2 ай бұрын

>Purely through logic and observation they created new knowledge that was remarkably close to the actual phenomenon In a way, science has come full circle back to this. Thats basically what quantum mechanics is. Theorists have been creating and refining quantum theory for around a century, but only relatively recently have we built the kind of experiments like CERN that can actually test the theories. And it turns out they were pretty close.

@nuru666 2 ай бұрын

@@tippyc2 Who'd have thought all that time in school would end up paying off... Oh, wait! ;)

@adamk.7177 Ай бұрын

Bro, they inhaled mercury gas. Sometimes they were intelligent, sometimes they were... too experimental.

@tippyc2 Ай бұрын

@@adamk.7177 And they stood around in rooms with fatally radioactive material. Whats your point?

@Tinil0 2 ай бұрын

"For it could not remain united if its property were to repel and not to attract" Well, it's a good thing Ramsay died in '16, a year before the proton was discovered. He would be very angry that protons stick together!

@tyruskarmesin5418 2 ай бұрын

Well, their property is to attract. They repel electromagneticly, but the strong force attracts them.

@tylisirn 2 ай бұрын

And how protons do that would be another mystery for the next 50+ years! It was finally solved by theory of quantum chromodynamics developed over 1960s, early 70s and empirically verified in late 70s, early 80s.

@fellinuxvi3541 Ай бұрын

@@tyruskarmesin5418 That's the point, you could theoretically conceive such an explanation to bind phlogiston with earth.

@aniksamiurrahman6365 Ай бұрын

@@fellinuxvi3541 What differentiates Phlogiston from proton is that, for proton, those properties were put to test as soon as it became technologically possible. The flaw in Phlogiston hypothesis is that, people back then didn't feel the need to experimentally verify so rigorously.

@fellinuxvi3541 Ай бұрын

@@aniksamiurrahman6365 That's not a problem with the theory itself though. Precisely the problem I have is that these guys are trying to disprove phlogiston a priori or by first principle, when experimentation is the only way and you can't just deduce from the get-go that phlogiston has to be false.

@jmchez 2 ай бұрын

The main proponent of executing Lavoisier was the revolutionary leader and newspaper publisher, Jean-Paul Marat. Marat had gone to visit Lavoisier to push some sort of pseudo-scientific idea. Lavoisier was offended and rudely kicked him out of the house. Marat was, in turn, humiliated and vowed to get revenge. It's interesting that the best known painting of Lavoisier is the one of him and his wife, painted by Jacques-Louis David. Ironically, David made an even more famous painting, "The Death of Marat".

@Zaniahiononzenbei Ай бұрын

Interesting to think that the "Alex Jones" of his time is the reason for his death.

@plebbers8799 25 күн бұрын

Marat was the guy in the bathtub, correct?

@jmchez 25 күн бұрын

@@plebbers8799 Yes.

@acenutella1196 2 ай бұрын

historical chemistry is so interesting

@LendriMujina 2 ай бұрын

If coal is almost pure phlogiston, and phlogiston has levity instead of gravity, therefore coal should fly around. You can really tell they were grasping at straws with that explanation, even without taking into account modern knowledge.

@alexrogers777 Ай бұрын

yeah the claim that phlogiston had negative mass was pretty obviously just a post hoc rationalization they pulled out of their ass when confronted with the observation that metals *gain* mass when burned

@BoleDaPole 27 күн бұрын

Coal is almost pure phlogeston yes, but the parts that aren't weigh it down drastically.

@Plan-xb1hs 2 ай бұрын

Phlogiston truthers gonna be mad when they hear this

@aniksamiurrahman6365 Ай бұрын

I'm waiting for the revival of Phlogiston theory and to hear how Oxygen is an evil conspiracy of the deep state. I'm hearing this kind of thing not only for flat earth, but luminiferous aether as well.

@alexrogers777 Ай бұрын

Reject oxygen Retvrn to phlogiston

@Mnemoniforma9.00 Ай бұрын

1:23 Worth noting that on the opposite side of Eurasia, alchemists had the Wu Xing, a completely different system of five elements in two complementary phases that interacted in cycles of suppression and generation.

@perguto Ай бұрын

It's interesting to see how phlogiston theory works surprisingly well as you can roughly equate it with "negative oxygen" or low oxidation states, allowing most statements of oxygen theory to be translated to phlogiston theory and vice versa, e.g. "absorbing phlogiston"="emitting oxygen/getting reduced", "oxygen has positive mass"="phlogiston has negative mass" etc.. Kinda reminds me of how, in electrical engineering, it rarely matters whether current truly flows from + to - or - to +, or of how positrons can be described as holes in the Dirac sea of negative energy electron states

@dominictarrsailing 2 ай бұрын

being able to restore the calx by heating with pure phlogiston must have seemed very compelling. I guess the oxygen moves over from the metal oxide to the carbon The phlogiston antigravity bit made me imagine the lifting power of a phlogiston blimp! probably MUCH more dangerous than just hydrogen. However, if phlogiston is negative mass but coal, which is (almost?) pure phlogiston, is curiously heavy. Thanks for the great video. It's really interesting to learn about the thought process people went through to produce modern science. For me personally, knowing about the history helps me to actually understand that science, a lot more than just learning about what we know now.

@ewantaylor2758 2 ай бұрын

The weight of coal was my first thought, too. Even if the other elements gave it some weight, surely it must have been suspicious that the stuff which had the purest amount of negative-weight matter was not wieghtless or at least incredibly light? Goes to show the willingness to overlook a detail in order to make a theory fit neatly.

@MP-te3bt 2 ай бұрын

Your clear voice and graphics make all of your videos so easy and interesting to watch. How amazing that you have all of those historical books?! To have all of that evidence and information in your hands must be an incredible feeling. Thanks for another great video and all of the hard work you must put in to it. Looking forward, as always, to the next one!

@BradleyCathcart 2 ай бұрын

I'm totally on board with this historical-focused approach to science education

@HappyGingerWolf Ай бұрын

I love that priestly decided to inhale this new mystery fire mercury gas basically as soon as he discovered it

@KallePihlajasaari Ай бұрын

After the mouse trials though. He had probably sniffed acid and ammonia fumes in the past and wanted a bit of insurance it was not lethal.

@an_asp 2 ай бұрын

That was excellent, and I loved the inclusion of so many contemporary sources. I love seeing the reasoning of people from the past, many of whom were quite smart but were missing essential information. Not to mention, for every "phlogiston", you can also find examples of people making surprisingly correct conclusions much earlier in history than one would expect, just from clever reasoning about their observations. It really gives you a window into how a lot of the knowledge we take for granted was learned.

@DanteGabriel-lx9bq 2 ай бұрын

It's always amazing to study the history of chemistry science. It's just beautiful, in my opinion.

@douro20 2 ай бұрын

Apparently Priestley defended phlogiston theory to his death.

@scottydu81 2 ай бұрын

Lysenko defended his bullshit too

@grimwaltzman 2 ай бұрын

It takes some strong convictions to believe in things that were proven wrong time and time again. You won't make it as a pseudoscientist if you are not determined till the end.

@ArkadiBolschek 2 ай бұрын

23:43 Wait, is that why oxygen is called _Sauerstoff_ in German??

@Luke-cv7bg 2 ай бұрын

French and English create new words from Latin and Greek roots. German (sometimes) just compounds Hydro = water (Greek) Hydrogen = water maker Wasserstoff Tele = far (Greek) Vision = seeing (Latin) Fehrnsehe Etc etc. (et cetera Latin and the others) und so weiter

@herosstratos 2 ай бұрын

23:58 Oxygen was assumed to be the basic component for the formation of acids. 24:18 Therefore, in 1779, Lavoisier proposed the term oxygenium ("acid former") for oxygen. Therefore German: "Sauer" (acidic) + "stoff" (substance).

@Seele2015au 2 ай бұрын

@@Luke-cv7bg Oxygen is called "sanso": "acid-element" in Japanese. By the way, hydrogen in Japanese is "suiso": "water-element".

@ArkadiBolschek 2 ай бұрын

@@Luke-cv7bg Yeah, I knew German scientists traditionally prefer not to use Latin or Greek roots. But I always wondered what their rationale was for calling Oxygen "Sour stuff".

@stefanjohansson1234 2 ай бұрын

Aha, and in Swedish oxygen is named Syrgas or Syre, "acidifier" maybe since acid is named Syra.

@is9893 2 ай бұрын

I always get so excited when I see you’ve posted a new video! This one didn’t disappoint :)

@craiglee3253 2 ай бұрын

the "4 elements" view was on the correct track. The three phases (solid, liquid, gaseous) and the energy released or required in the phase changes.

@luipaardprint 2 ай бұрын

Actually plasma is considered a phase nowadays. 🤓

@stephenhawking9781 Ай бұрын

There are many phases, go learn some thermodynamics

@ninjireal Ай бұрын

Craig is right, nerds are on a 5th phase called copium

@elchamyto64 2 ай бұрын

Awesome video! I read a book some months ago about chemistry history where phlogiston and other associations of many elements yet unknown to the time appeared, you should talk more about them and how they were debunked. Understanding how the great minds of those times managed to do it is always interesting to see! :)

@evanhodgson4141 11 күн бұрын

First video of yours! I really enjoyed the content. The historical science text is so fascinating along with the amazing stories that go with them. You did a great job

@renegade1520 Ай бұрын

Great video! Thanks for covering this topic.

@benmcreynolds8581 2 ай бұрын

A concept that used to exist in the past, that always resonated with me, is Ether. The concept of The Ether and that the universe consists of an Ether is just a cool concept that i feel could be expanded upon & adapted in creative ways. Giving us ways to explain what make up the different regions of so called emptiness throughout our universe

@Arbyjar 2 ай бұрын

I agree, but I actually like the experiment disproving it as a medium for light even more. There’s no reason to say that ether can’t exist, but not in the way it has been described historically. On a more physics-esque note, ether could be the new name for the fabric of space-time, or maybe the Higgs field?

@benmcreynolds8581 2 ай бұрын

@Arbyjar Exactly! You get it! It's refreshing to read your reply. That's exactly how I've liked to ponder about this. Taking the classic concept & converting it into a new accurate realm instead of all that previous inaccurate alchemist type stuff. This is just a fun thought experiment but I feel like it'd be possible to create multiple types of accurate categories of Ether.. I know that's a loose way to describe it.. but here's some vague examples: There's the category you already mentioned, then there could be separate layers of Ether. Like a way of describing different regions with different particle densities. Maybe even to describe different atmospheric contents. All I'm trying to say is there is different amounts of particle densities throughout space. Even in the so called vacuum of space. We recently learned there is a "bubble" around our Sun, around our solar system consisting of solar wind, charged particles in the Heliosphere. Just imagine what we have yet to discover around galactic clusters, nebulas, etc. etc. I just think there's depth to this niche and ways to utilize an old inaccurate term and turn it into a new accurate useful term

@cipaisone 2 ай бұрын

Fairytale believers

@Arbyjar 2 ай бұрын

@@cipaisone ? What

@scottydu81 2 ай бұрын

I keep coming back to the idea that the ether and the higgs field are kinda similar

@MySerpentine Ай бұрын

I guessed that they were going to think of antigravity before you said it.

@trevorhaddox6884 2 ай бұрын

Old science books are awesome. It's cool to find sometimes lost or little known bits of science history, or to see old fashioned terms used in original contexts. For example, the ether theory of electromagnetism was still common even in the start of the broadcast radio era in the early 1920s, well after the discovery of electrons and the start of quantum physics.

@Т1000-м1и 2 ай бұрын

"This sounds like lame sci-fi" type old science is always somewhat entertaining

@phpART 2 ай бұрын

Great video. One of my favorite channels on KZbin!

@zionent8392 2 ай бұрын

Imagine living in a time where people didn't even knew what they were breathing.

@gljames24 2 ай бұрын

Lots of people don't know of all the particulates and pollutions in the air they are breathing.

@giin97 Ай бұрын

Considering the number of deaths per year directly attributable to coal power plant emissions and the number of people still defending their existence, I'd say that still describes us pretty well. Shoot, even 15 years ago, a disconcerting percentage of British teens when polled about food sources had no idea that cow's milk was an animal product. Humans on average, even today, are kinda dumb :P

@BoleDaPole Ай бұрын

Yea people was so dumb back then lmao fools didn't even kno they was breathing 😅

@RafaCB0987 2 ай бұрын

It is really fascinating to see how much things that we take for granted today have come to be

@BoomRoomFive Ай бұрын

Awesome video, you have a new sub :) It really puts our held beliefs about our world in perspective. I'm sure we have many phlogistones!

@10xGeneration 2 ай бұрын

Ridiculously amazing video. Please never stop!

@lwaldron9745 2 ай бұрын

Dark energy and dark matter are the phlogiston of today.

@silentdrew7636 2 ай бұрын

I was going to say String Theory but that works too

@xostler 2 ай бұрын

My money is on quantum gravity but idk if I’ll make it 300 years to collect

@tristanridley1601 2 ай бұрын

Absolutely! They keep finding conflicting data.

@terrestrialTerror 2 ай бұрын

Dark matter isn't a theory, it's a series of observations. There are theories of dark matter but dark matter itself is not a theory.

@lunatickoala 2 ай бұрын

@@terrestrialTerror The name "dark matter" is misleading because the observations are gravitational anomalies. They could be the result of particle dark matter, they could be the result of needing to modify our understanding of gravity, and there's also the nightmare scenario in which both are true. But the name implies that it's particle dark matter and theories like Lambda-CDM have "dark matter" in the name. One suggestion I've heard is that the series of observations be called "Dark Gravity" to clearly differentiate the observations from the theories. To someone who isn't well aware of the distinction, it sounds absurd for someone to first claim that "dark matter" (the observations) has been seen over and over and is irrefutable while "dark matter" (any of the particle theories) is unproven. And undoubtedly some people who are aware of the distinction still think it's a lousy if not absurd name.

@tyrone1498 Ай бұрын

So glad I was at work and had the random thought of learning the history of chemistry

@statickaeder29 Ай бұрын

How wonderful, to find such an old book!

@ptonpc 2 ай бұрын

What always gets me is how *close* some of those ideas were to what we understand of reality now. They were not correct but you can see *why* they thought.

@luipaardprint 2 ай бұрын

Just consider this comment 300 years in the future about today

@battleoid2411 Ай бұрын

@@luipaardprintI'll set an alarm but im not sure I'll wake up to it

@charlesmanning3454 2 ай бұрын

Thank you for such a detailed history of ideas!!!

@amadeosendiulo2137 Ай бұрын

I didn't even know about Michał Sędziwój!

@AsmodeusMictian 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the awesome video!!

@fariesz6786 2 ай бұрын

my compliments for the pronunciation of the German names. small advice: a ‹v› in German is, for all intents and purposes, always pronounced like an ‹f› so the word «von» should sound like "fonn"

@Chemistorian 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for pointing this out, I’ll try and remember that for next time!

@joshuab4586 2 ай бұрын

I can’t believe that Lavoisier guy invented oxygen and cursed us all

@Т1000-м1и 2 ай бұрын

I somehow guessed that alchemists tried to invent exotic matter with this one

@TOBAPNW_ 23 күн бұрын

9:35 phlogiston needn't have had anti-gravity properties, it would merely have to be lighter than air. I suppose the result is the same, but the mechanism is different.

@pingnick 2 ай бұрын

Wow has a feel similar to Kathy Loves Physics and History Channel-thanks!🎬🚀

@Kadranos 4 күн бұрын

When I learned the story of phlogiston in highschool chem (alongside some other examples), it led me to conclude that scientific knowledge itself must periodically be dephlogisticated to purge itself of rigid and failing orthodoxy adhered to through mere consensus. Something scientists forget at the peril of many.

@tedwalford7615 Ай бұрын

I think aether was prematurely rejected. We know that light travels at different speeds in different media. Therefore a medium can slow light. We've long known the speed of light in "empty" space, but we now know that space is not empty. Might light speed be instantaneous were it not for some limiting substance or energy in so-called empty space? Might the just-discovered Higgs Field, or something else not quite yet discovered, be that aether that was once conjectured? Otherwise, why should there be any limit on the rate of propagation of electromagnetic waves?

@jeffallen3382 2 ай бұрын

How were you able to pronounce all those names? Wow!

@thequeenofswords7230 Ай бұрын

Fire-air! Oh my God, watching Chemistry develop out of Alchemy is so adorable.

@BruhMan-m3r 2 ай бұрын

Amazing video!!

@omnirath Ай бұрын

What a well phlogistigated video

@cipaisone 2 ай бұрын

Excellent video. If you haven’t done yet, I would like a video about vitalism, and how it was disproved ( despite to this day many people still believe in it, or in more sophisticated fairytales)

@xostler 2 ай бұрын

People 400 years from now: “can you believe the knuckledraggers believed in _quantum gravity?”_

@damienasmodeus928 26 күн бұрын

We don't believe in quantum gravity. Lol

@deathracoffee Ай бұрын

I love this, you are doing such a great job delivering these stories! Have you read Sam Kean's Disappearing Spoon? Similar stories to your content

@smileyp4535 2 ай бұрын

13:02 why is it in the books all the "S"s in words are replaced with "f"s? (Except at the end) "almoft", "comfuftability", "refins", "fufibility", "fuppofes", etc (they obviously had the letter 's' since they use it at the end and at the beginning of the name "Stahl" so what gives?

@landrypierce9942 Ай бұрын

They aren’t ‘f’ they’re long ‘s,’ written ‘ſ.’ We don’t use that letter today, but the point is it’s the standard ‘s’ sound but longer.

@smileyp4535 Ай бұрын

@@landrypierce9942 oh but wouldn't a "long s" always sound like "ess" like in "suc-cess"

@irasponsibly Ай бұрын

@@smileyp4535it was just a style thing, and putting long s at the end of the word didn't look as good, so it wasn't done.

@niikasd Ай бұрын

@@smileyp4535 no it's just an s, it was used to save space. Long refers to it's shape.

@smileyp4535 Ай бұрын

@@niikasd hmm I wonder why it went out of style

@Science4Real 22 күн бұрын

Just thinking about how scientists back then had to struggle to explain phenomena that seem so obvious to us now, like burning fire, shows such creativity. I wonder if there’s any theory in modern times that's clinging on like phlogiston was

@Taskforce1 Ай бұрын

damn it's super interesting to think through this evolution of discovery as they woulda thought about it. thinking about the flame as substance bleeding out of the log rather than a chemical reaction. its cool to see the different layers of reality being discovered. wonder what comes after quantum.

@SotraEngine4 Ай бұрын

In Norwegian the old name for exygen was surstoff -- meaning sour material

@ANIME_AFFINADO Ай бұрын

Make a video about History of Madame marie Curie and her discovery of radioactive substance..

@Mmouse_ 2 ай бұрын

Tbf... Lacking the knowledge the air, fire, water and earth theory is a good stab at what's going on.

@BoleDaPole 27 күн бұрын

Bring back phlogiston!

@erictaylor5462 Ай бұрын

26:00 There is a physical response to a drop in blood pressure inside the head that renders this idea almost certainly untrue. If for some reason blood pressure in your head drops even a little you will lose conciseness instantly. When the head is severed pressure inside the head drops to zero, so while the victim if a decapitation is likely unconscious even before the blade has finished its work. So these stories of victims seemingly being aware of anything after decapitation are either false, or they are autonomic responses.

@jacksonwilliams8971 2 ай бұрын

Excellent video, love your research and writing style! Onnnnne lil nitpick: “Aristotelian” is pronounced like “uh-wrist-uh-TEE-lee-in”

@Chemistorian 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for pointing this out! That’s the one pronunciation I didn’t think I needed to look up, so of course I managed to get it wrong 😅

@dovahfruit9503 24 күн бұрын

"While watching this video, I want you to pretend that you've never heard of oxygen" "Okay" "For most of human history, we had no idea of its existence" "Of what's existence?"

@moonsterdark5255 Ай бұрын

Fascinating.

@kujojotarostandoceanman2641 Ай бұрын

Human's knowledge really got a huge progress

@JeffBilkins 5 күн бұрын

It could be fun to start a series (or second channel) with 'serious' science videos on these aged theories (as if they are the current science).

@brachypelmasmith Ай бұрын

that antigravitational property of flogiston was really grasping at straws.

@seagie382 Ай бұрын

I mean solid liquid gas plasma, they were correct

@GPN007a Ай бұрын

Air = Gas, Fire = Plasma, Water = Liquid, Earth = Solid. Shit they were kinda right 😂

@randydewees7338 2 ай бұрын

Old Priestley should have kept at it! He seemed to have a sense of humor too.

@Basement_crusader 2 ай бұрын

This reminds me a lot of dark matter theories where what we have discovered is the inverse of its presence. Phlogiston is like inverse oxygen in a way.

@giin97 Ай бұрын

6:00 heh. Wasn't expecting mass. I was expecting the major problem to be that you couldn't heat charcoal and ash to make wood, and slowly heating wood makes charcoal in the first place.

@Napoleonic_S 2 ай бұрын

I know this would not fit into this channel but it would be interesting to compare this phlogiston theory with the aether theory... For one both involves "the air".

@alexwang982 2 ай бұрын

So good

@atzuras Ай бұрын

Short version: Ramsay got high with oxygen and his first thought was : "I can sell this drug as a luxurious good. "

@blueheartorangeheart3768 Ай бұрын

We making it out of Natlan with this one

@tedwalford7615 Ай бұрын

"Dark matter" and "dark energy" seem like today's phlogiston.

@AricGardnerMontreal 2 ай бұрын

It was the first time there was even a theory that was trying to be sensible. Something to pull apart to find the truth, cool video

@omnirath Ай бұрын

In the west yes

@sean..L 19 күн бұрын

Missed opportunity to have red calx by aphex twin played in the background

@organobot 2 ай бұрын

phlogiston was mentioned off-handedly in a science textbook i read as a kid and i've been curious about it ever since :)

@mario0de7 2 ай бұрын

Ah the beauty of science its often wrong but it never says its right, it only says what the best theory is

@andyedwards9011 Ай бұрын

It’s not surprising at all that people thought phlogiston has negative mass, since in addition to burning things gaining weight, fire (the escaping phlogiston) travels upward. Sure, they couldn’t explain how it’s held together with some substances despite this repulsion, but there are plenty of modern examples of a repulsive force being overcome by a stronger attractive force

@blapty 2 ай бұрын

In many ways the philosophers of old were right in those are some of the most common phases of matter. Earth, solid; Air, gaseous; Water, liquid; and fire, plasma. Others phases are far more exotic and are not immediately obvious to the casual observer. One could see how they would come to such of an insightful conclusion.

@scottbergeson8726 25 күн бұрын

Put Barry Soetoro in Hennig Brand's retort!

@Yora21 2 ай бұрын

In German, Oxygen is still called Sauerstoff, which means "acidifying matter". (And Nitrogen is called Stickstoff, "suffocating matter".)

@joels310 2 ай бұрын

The thing about people is that no one wants to be the one who disagrees with the masses and there are likely many theories that are widely accepted which are grossly errant but no one even questions as it seems sensible enough, so why question the narrative?

@Superbrains 2 ай бұрын

The death of Antoine was so tragic. It was not fair😢

@whirl3690 Ай бұрын

To give some credit to the theory of phlogiston having "anti-gravity properties," it *would* explain why flames rise.

@davidwillis5016 22 күн бұрын

Thanks

@RonSparks2112 2 ай бұрын

How dd Scheel know that the gas he produced constituted approximately 1/3 of the mass of "common air"?

@KallePihlajasaari Ай бұрын

When you oxidize a metal with concentrated sunlight in an inverted test tube over water it rises about one third of the way as O2 in the air is consumed but never more.

@johnnzboy 2 ай бұрын

I've encountered references to phlogistan before and wondered about it - thank you for the comprehensive explanation and history of it, very informative and enjoyable.