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What is Chemistry?
Put it simply Chemistry is the study of matter
and the way matter changes.
The word Chemistry comes from an ancient Egyptian word khemeia.
Khemeia was an Egyptian art which occurs in various Egyptian groups
that was connected to mummification. Later along the history, its
practices included things such as dyeing, metallurgy and glass making.
Although the ancients knew of copper, silver, gold, tin, lead, iron,
carbon and sulphur, they did not know that these are elements. To
them, they follow the teachings of the 5th century BC Greek thinker
and philosopher Empedocles and popularized by Aristotle. To them,
matter was made up of four elements - the earth, air, fire and water.
To them this classification made sense because after all, earth
is not a solid, water is not a liquid, air not a gas and fire not
an energy. Of course, to use people that study "Science"
and call ourselves Scientists, that sentence does not make sense
to us.
When Greek thinking encountered the Egyptian art of khemeia, probably
during Alexandria about 300 BC, alchemy was born and it flourished
for two thousand years. Alchemy combined mysticism and many general
scientific experimentation. The alchemists became obsessed with
the search of immortality and trying to turn any kind of metals
into gold. They were the first to make general use of many of the
chemicals we use today, such as strong acids - sulphuric acid, hydrochloric
acid and nitric acid. They also developed many experimental procedure
such as filtration, dissolution of solids and simple distillation.
The alchemists had built up a list of practical scientific information
but they did not understand why things happened. Before our current
understanding of chemistry, there are 3 more important concepts
that were developed and followed:
1. Appreciation that scientific progress begins always with experiments
and onservations
2. An understanding of what an element is - Robert Boyle and Antoine
Lavoisier concluded the elements are the simplest unit that cannot
be further broken down.
3. Development of the Atomic Theory - Greek philosopher Leucippus
and Democritus proposed about this theory but was not successful.
John Dalton is the one that came in to prove its existence.
And with that, the Russian Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 - 1907) came in
to construct the world famous The Periodic Table which are recognised
as the most important system of classification in Chemistry.
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