Show the primordial element A recurrent Fe current hypothesis I 1 among the theories of chemistry there is none that possesses more interest to men who are speculatively speculative y inclined than that of the existence of a primordial element or a primitive form of matter from which all other kinds of matter are obtained by a process of condensation A study of the history of our science shows that this quasi scientific hypothesis has had adherents in almost all the ages has been effectually disposed of by its opponents again and again but like banquot ghost will not down turning our thoughts back to the sixth century before christ we find thales as sorting 0 that water was the first principle of all things and Ana claiming that air was the primal element at the same period considered fire and Phero kides earth as the krstoff Ur stoff in th the century following empedocles included all these four earth air fire water under the elements an and d to them aristotle in the fourth century before christ added a quinta or fifth element from which we get our term quintessence quintes cence the age of scientific experimentation did not occur until centuries after the time of the greek philosophers so their hypotheses were purely products of the imagination and not based upon observed phenomena critically studied during the centuries following the idea that matter was made up of only a few elements combined in different proportions held sway geber eighth century believed that all metals were compounds of sulphur and mercury albertus magnus thirteenth century wrote the metals are all essentially identical they differ only in form when pure sulphur comes in contact with pure mercury after more or less time and by the permanent action of nature gold is produced other al chemists of the middle ages held similar views the quotation from albertus magnus suggests a possibility of making one substance from another especially one metal from another by causing the primal elements to combine in the proportions required in other words it shows the basis for a belief in the transmutation of the metals if by some means or other one could obtain a substance or object capable of converting a base metal into its constituents and then making these constituents fe recombine combine in indifferent different proportions so as to presented at the initial meeting of the utah academy of science april 3 1908 by W C ebaugh produce a noble metal one would be possessed of unlimited wealth and power this something usually called tho the ahers stone became the goal or prize for which the alchemist worked even a man of the learning and ability of roger bacon the english franciscan monk of the thirteenth century wrote as follows to wish to transform one kind of metal into another as to make silver out of lead or gold out of copper is as absurd as to pretend to create anything out of nothing next calling attention to the possibility of purifying a base metal so as to obtain a noble metal he continues it is necessary to imitate nature but here a grave difficulty presents itself for nature does not count the cycles which she takes for her work to which the term of life of a man is but as an hour it is then important to find some means which will permit one to do in a little time that which nature does in a very much longer time it is this means which the al chemists call indifferently the elixir philosophers stone etc an extension of the theory went so far as to claim that the metals in the earth were actually in a state of growth and in the middle ages it was customary to close a mine from time to time to permit such growth to take place without interruption at the beg beginning ining of the seventeenth century van helmont resuscitated the hypothesis of thales that water was the primal element and adduced many experimental proofs for his assertions probably his most famous experiment was that with the willow tree placing a weighed amount of earth in an earthen vessel he planted in it a willow weighing five pounds and then watered it with rain or distilled water five years later he weighed re the willow and found that it had increased to almost one hundred and seventy pounds while the earth in which it had grown had decreased in weight only a couple of ounces what was more natural than to ascribe the growth of the willow to the water that had been used in feeding it since nothing was known about the gaseous medium that sur rounded the plant here was apparent evidence that water had been transformed into the various substances found in the willow tree toward the end of the seventeenth century we find the phlogiston theory advanced to explain the phenomenon of combustion according to this hypothesis every combustible substance contains a peculiar something known as phlogiston which escapes during the process of burning A hundred years later the phlogiston doctrine dominated chemistry and it was only about the year 1800 that Lavoi Lavol correct explanation of combustion displaced that of the in phlogiston one sees another illustration of a primal element passing over the foundation of the atomic hypothesis by dalton and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century we come to the year 1815 when prout a professional physician and amateur chemist formulated the remarkable hypothesis that bears his name it should be said in justice to prout that in 1824 he discovered the presence of hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice noticing that the relative combining weights of the elements as compared with hydrogen were almost all whole numbers or very nearly whole numbers prout suggested that this was more than a coincidence and in fact might be accounted for on the assumption that all other elements are formed from hydrogen by condensation later the hypothesis was modified so as to take into consideration some elements whose combining or atomic weights were expressed by whole numbers and halves of whole numbers an immediate protest against the hypothesis was made and during all the decades since its promulgation the chemical journals have had articles against it the opposition is well stated by tilden short history of progress of scientific chemistry who says this hypothesis has proved itself exceedingly attractive to some of the master minds of chemistry and has wrought much harm as all false hypotheses must because of this lack of foundation no overthrow could be complete although it has suffered many reversals it still comes to life every now and then much of the best work of dumas berzelius and stas upon the of the atomic weights of the elements was done in order to establish these constants with the greatest accuracy as a basis for arguments against prouts crouts hypothesis their opinion which is practically identical with that of everyone who has made atomic weight determinations is that the variations from whole numbers of the values obtained cannot be due to experimental errors yet calculations by based base d upon the theory of probability have shown that the chances are only about one in a thousand that any set of numbers assigned purely at random would differ from whole numbers by so little as do the atomic weights weigh ts alc mccoy coy J am chem soc 1908 what are some of the reasons that have made this th is hypothesis exceeds exceedingly ngy attract attractive ivd to some of the m master aster winds minds of chemistry especially during recent ye years ars three reasons will be mentioned in the first place the wonderful generalization aliza tion kii known own as the periodic system 0 of f the chemical elements expressed in its fullness by jeff and lothar meyer about 1870 shows how the physical and chemical properties of the elements are periodic functions of their atomic weights i 1 e depend upon these atomic weights for their values since the elements fall into these natural families or groups when they are arranged in the order of their ascending atomic weights and since the numerical relations between the atomic weights of elements within a group as well as their chemical and physical properties are comparatively ively simple would it not be reasonable to look beneath the surface for the explanation of these facts if this is done does abes not the idea of a primordial element suggest itself in the second place the evidence furnished bythe by the spectroscopic study of the heavenly bodies has been interpreted by some as favorable to the hypothesis of a pilm ordial element the hottest stars are found to contain the fewest elements hydrogen being the most conspicuous stars that have partly cooled like our own sun contain a greater number of elements and the planet upon which we live has given to the inquiring chemist some eighty different kinds of elementary matter in 1878 professor J norman lockyer in a paper before the royal society called attention to the possible significance of this series of observations he urged that the fact of the suns showing fewer elements than are observed here on the cool earth while stars much hotter than the sun show chiefly one element and that one hydrogen the lightest of all known elements seemed to give color to the possibility that our alleged elements are really compounds which at the temperature of the hottest stars may be decomposed into hydrogen the latter element itself being also doubtless a compound which might be resolved under yet more trying conditions Is not this fair evidence that a primordial element is not beyond reason the third line of inquiry that has directed attention to prouts crouts hypothesis of a primal element may be summed up in the one word radioactivity about twelve years have elapsed since roentgen discovered the marvelous X ray and becque ral discovered the peculiar properties of uranium and uranium bearing minerals viz that of emitting radiations capable of affecting the photographic plate and of increasing the electrical conductivity of gases it was soon found that thorium possessed similar properties in 1898 the curies auries separated pitchblende into compounds of its constituent elements and found that the bismuth and barium fractions possessed radioactivity radio activity to a marked degree that due to the bismuth fraction was ascribed to an unknown element to which they gave the name polonium and that due to the barium fraction was said to be caused by the presence of another new element to which the name radium was applied interest has h as centered about the latter element for it has since been found to be more than a million times as active as thorium or uranium and in addition maintains its temperature above that of the surrounding atmosphere A number of scientists attacked problems in this new and alluring field of investigation and the reports upon their work cover thousands of pages stated briefly three kinds of radiations are emitted a alpha rays consisting of positively charged material particles whose masses are two or four times that of the hydrogen atom and which move with a velocity about one tenth that of light b beta rays resembling cathode rays made up of negatively charged particles about one thousandth as heavy as the hydrogen a ton and moving with a velocity from one fifth to nine tenths that of light c gamma rays resembling roentgen rays but with greater penetrative power the gamma rays are not looked upon as made up of material particles at all but rather as a form of energy pulses in the ether this conception of a material particle only one one thousandth as large as the hydrogen atom used by thomson in explaining the action of a crookes tube the particle being the same whether given off by one metal or another was something distinctly new to science not content with breaking up the atom into corpuscles corpus cles electrons electrons or other named smaller particles the modern alchemist claims that in a few instances he has even been able to effect a transformation or transmutation of the one element into another the proof seems positive forr for when ramsay rutherford crookes boltwood mccoy and others declare that these things have been done we are forced to believe their statements thus radium itself is supposed to be a product of the disintegration of the uranium atom ur X and th X coming from ur and th respectively are transitional elements in a state of unstable equilibrium in 1903 it was shown that one of disintegration products was helium the rare gas that was discovered upon the sun in 1868 but not found upon the earth until 1895 during 1907 ramsay and cameron showed that the action of the radium emanation upon water produced neon and upon copper nitrate solution formed argon lithium was found in the residual copper solution although none was present before the action of the emanation has this powerful source of energy radium been able to decompose copper into its constituent primordial element which element has afterwards recombined in a different proportion to form lithium it would seem that the dream of the alchemist has become an accomplished fact so far as the conversion of a few elements into elements of lower atomic weight is concerned but the reverse of this process forming elements of high atomic weight from those whose atomic weight is lower has not yet been done after all this is it unreasonable to suppose that fronts hypothesis po thesis in some modified form will soon be taught with as much certainty as other theories and hypotheses of science after reviewing the successive ups and downs of the theory of a primordial element and having taken into consideration the scientific developments of the last ten or fifteen years one is led to believe that the theory is now in the ascendant how better could this be expressed than by mccoy in an address delivered before the american chemical society in january while the work of the nineteenth century produced abundant and varied evidence that between the elements there exists the most intimate relationships the researches of the past few years of this new century have shown the fundamental significance of those relationships and lead us to the conclusions that the elements may no longer be considered immutable but that matter is probably of but a single sort of which our commonest elements represent the more stable forms which have resulted from a process of natural evolution 0 |