Joseph Priestley Isolates Many New Gases and Begins a European Craze for Soda Water
Overview
Until the late eighteenth century, the accepted theory of chemical reaction was the "phlogiston theory." This theory, whose name was coined by German chemist Georg Stahl (1660-1734) in the early 1700s, stated that a substance "phlogiston," which is Greek for "burned," was liberated when any material underwent combustion or when a metal was oxidized. By the late 1700s chemists, especially Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), had applied quantitative measurements and demonstrated that oxidized metals, or metals that had rusted, weighed more than nonoxidized ones, thus proving that phlogiston did not exist. Proponents of the phlogiston theory then countered that phlogiston was a negative quantity. Finally by 1800, after several new gases had been discovered and their role in combustion and oxidation identified, the phlogiston theory was overthrown and modern chemistry was born.
The groundbreaking experiments of one Englishman spurred this scientific revolution. Working alone, this minister and teacher isolated ten new gases and noted their properties. Scientific curiosity led him to dissolve his new gases, or "airs" as he called them, in water. The result with one gas was a carbonated drink, which he called "soda water." He was also among the first to observe and write about the process of photosynthesis and about a plant's respiratory cycle.
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