LavoisierIn 1772, Antoine Lavoisier reported in a note to the Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences that in the previous week he had discovered that sulphur and phosphorus when burned increased in weight because they absorbed “air,” while the metallic lead formed when litharge was heated with charcoal weighed less than the original litharge because it had lost “air.” The exact nature of the airs concerned in the processes he could not yet explain, and he proceeded to study the question extensively. Lavoisier's investigation of the role of air in combustion would change the way chemists viewed combustion.eb |
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