L'Electrificació de la química al segle XVIII : una xarxa de guspires

Autors/ores

  • Pere Grapí i Vilumara

Resum

Although Voltas uncovering of the electric pile in 1800 opened the frontiers of a new territory for chemistry that resulted to be very fruitful along the century, it was during the previous century that electricity in the form of sparks invaded the practice of chemistry. This process of electrification happened in a quite complex stage that can be viewed as a net with its main nodes in Italy, England, France and Holland. In these neuralgic centers prestigious men of science like Beccaria, Volta, Monge, Berthollet, Lavoisier, Priestley, Cavendish, and Martinus van Marum adopted theories for both the nature of electricity and the nature of chemical change in order to explain the observed changes when electric sparks were triggered on substances. The intrusion of electricity into chemistry was not alien to two great challenges: the nature of «airs» and its purity or breathiness. It was in these two aspects that the electrification of chemistry fostered a new instrumentation that had in Voltas eudiometer its more emblematic instrument at the end of the XVIIIth century but that reached its top in the next century with the analysis of gaseous samples.

Descàrregues

Publicat

2008-11-19

Número

Secció

Patrimoni científic i tècnic