1. Boyle held these two names because as he started becoming interested in the sciences, he searched for the same ends as the alchemists had (immortality, transfiguration). But as he aged and discovered more, he began working to figure out natural laws, such as those of gravity and matter.
2. One of Boyle’s most significant early discoveries was his reassertion of the notion that the world is made up of small particles that can be combined in different was to create everything. This then led to his discovery that all metals burn a different color. This helped greatly in the definition and classification of elements.
3. Boyle’s Law describes that if you have a gas at a set temperature, and you increase by two times the pressure put upon it, you will reduce the volume of the gas by half. This also works in that if you decrease by half the pressure put upon the same gas at the same temperature, you will double the volume of the gas.
4. Boyle’s Law first put forth the notion that the universe is run by a set of laws that can be defined and recorded. This would then make it easier to study the world as it would set some limits to what it could do and would lend a certain amount of certainty to records and observations made.
5. Theories proved correct:
The world is made of small building blocks
At a certain point, these can no longer be broken down
Air is a physical object
Sound could not travel in a vacuum
Theories proved incorrect:
There are four building blocks: earth, air, fire, and water
Air has no weight
Vacuums cannot exist
25.2.07
29.1.07
The Autobiography of Nickel
Hello. My name is Nickel. And don’t worry, all you speakers of German, I’m the element, and I have nothing to do with the devil, which is for some reason my namesake. I was singled out by humans in 1751 by a Swedish man named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt. He discovered me by reducing dissolved iron with charcoal. He actually named me after the dirty, useless substance that contained me that was released during iron production. My atomic number is 28. I have a white-metallic color, and have a consistency similar to iron. I melt at about 2,651° F (1,455° C) and boil at about 5,275°F (2,913°C). I am quite un-corrosive, and so one of my chief uses is to be bonded with other metals to protect them. I can make stainless-steel, armored steel plates, and I can be electroplated (coat on a molecular level) to metals to make coins that keep their shine and printing for decades.
14.1.07
Reading Assignment #1
1. Phlogiston is the substance something becomes when it is burned.
2. Most of alchemy was random people trying anything and everything to get to an impossible goal, but sometimes, they found useful information along the way.
3. If a substance reacts with an acid, it will generate positively charged hydrogen ions. If it reacts with a base, it will create negatively charged hydroxide ions.
4. They were gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead, mercury, carbon, and sulfer.
5. Arsenic, in 1250 by Albertus Magnus, and Phosphorus, in 1669 by Hennig Brandt.
6. I don not believe that these quests have ever stopped, but I do believe that the search for wealth and youth has moved away from the scientific community and has been taken up by the business and marketing organizations. Many products now-a-days assert "youthful looks", and weather they work or not, corporations are using this unending search to make a quick buck off the teaming throngs of buyers trying anything to reach their goals.
2. Most of alchemy was random people trying anything and everything to get to an impossible goal, but sometimes, they found useful information along the way.
3. If a substance reacts with an acid, it will generate positively charged hydrogen ions. If it reacts with a base, it will create negatively charged hydroxide ions.
4. They were gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead, mercury, carbon, and sulfer.
5. Arsenic, in 1250 by Albertus Magnus, and Phosphorus, in 1669 by Hennig Brandt.
6. I don not believe that these quests have ever stopped, but I do believe that the search for wealth and youth has moved away from the scientific community and has been taken up by the business and marketing organizations. Many products now-a-days assert "youthful looks", and weather they work or not, corporations are using this unending search to make a quick buck off the teaming throngs of buyers trying anything to reach their goals.