Questions: (to be answered on a half sheet of paper, crosswise)
1. For the ancient Greeks, they were convinced that the world was made up of four elements:
earth, air, fire, and water. An alchemist, Paracelsus, challenged this notion and proposed that
the whole world was made up of 3 different elements. What were these elements? Which
among these “elements” was not really an element?
2. Gold was an end goal for alchemists back in the day, and some had the idea that gold might be
found within the human body. Hennig Brand thought he could extract gold from urine. During
his experiments however, he was able to isolate a different element. What element did he
discover? What was the reason for the presence of this element in the urine?
3. What made Robert Boyle different from his alchemist contemporaries at the time in relation to
his work as one of the first “modern” chemists? Looking at his arguably most famous written
work, The Sceptical Chymist, what was different about this book compared to other similar texts
at the time?
4. Fire, once thought to be an element, perplexed people for a very long time trying to figure out
what it was and how something could burn. Johann Becher proposed that the existence of an
ethereal substance known as “phlogiston” that explained why things burn. The idea was so
widely accepted, in fact, that Henry Cavendish claimed to have discovered this “phlogiston”
through an experiment where he produced a gas. What were the properties of the gas that
made him conclude it was “phlogiston?” What element was that gas in reality?
5. With the scientific community still stuck with the notion that things burn because of phlogiston,
Antoine Lavoisier seemed to have made a breakthrough that debunked the older idea that
phlogiston is released when an object is burned. Thanks to his conversations with Joseph
Priestley and building upon his previous experiments, Lavoisier discovered that a gas was
absorbed during combustion rather than phlogiston being released. What was this gas? Going
back to the experiment that Henry Cavendish did that led to the discovery of another elemental
gas, every time that gas was lit up, liquid formed on the sides of the glass. This put into question
if water was an element or not. If water is not an element, what gaseous elements then was
water made up of?
6. How did Antoine Lavoisier define what an element is?
Bonus:
1. What are the current names of the following compounds?
Astringent of Mars Saffron
Oil of Vitriol
Philosophical Wool
2. Historically, who did we consider as the Father of Modern Chemistry?