![]() ![]() Joseph Priestley's Experimental ApparatusĪ scientific historian describes the experimental apparatus Joseph Priestley used to make his breakthrough discoveries about the nature of gases. To his surprise, he found that the resulting gas could keep a mouse alive four times as long in this "new species of air." Priestley focused a beam of sunlight on red mercuric oxide (the chemical formula for mercuric oxide is HgO you can learn more about it at ). The substance was under an inverted glass jar in a pool of mercury. His second famous experiment was conducted in 1774. He discovered that mice died very quickly in this habitat, however, when a plant was placed inside and the jar was exposed to sunlight, the mouse could survive again. Priestley's first indication about the existence of oxygen came when he lit a flame inside a jar until it burned out. Gases were commonly collected in jars inverted over experiments and sealed. Then, Joseph Priestley unknowingly discovered oxygen in the mid 1770s and started a series of changes that revolutionized chemistry.Īt the time, a popular way of testing air quality was to see how long a mouse could survive in it. Phlogiston theory also regarded air as a pure element. Because some metals gained mass when burnt, chemists thought that phlogiston had a negative mass. When burnt, the phlogiston was released as a flame and the substance returned to its elemental state. The theory held that all flammable substances contained a combustible substance called phlogiston. Phlogiston theory was first proposed by Johann Joachim Becher in 1667. ![]() Lavoisier's experiments began at the end of the 18th century with the dis-proving of Phlogiston theory, the dominant explanation of combustion and the rusting of metal at the time. One of the first valuable contributors to Dalton's Atomic Theory was Antoine Lavoisier. ![]()
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