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亚里士多德的“四元素说”中有水土互变的提法,17世纪比利时化学家海尔蒙特曾以柳树的实验来支持这一观点。然而,有个年轻人却不相信这个说法。1768年的一天,这位年轻人耐心地观察着一个正在被加热的容器,这个容器里的水已经沸腾了100天,这些水在不断被蒸馏的同时也不断被冷却流回这个密闭容器。当他仔细地称量出容器、水以及沉淀物的质量时,脸上不禁露出了笑容:沉淀物的质量恰好等于容器减少的质量,而水的质量在整个蒸馏过程中丝毫未变。他用精确科学的实验,有力地驳倒了当时化学界十分流行的水转化为土之说。这位相信实证、不盲从权威的年轻人,就是现代化学的奠基人——拉瓦锡。
Aristotle’s “four-element theory,” there is a mixture of soil and water terms, 17th-century Belgian chemist Helmont had willows experiment to support this view. However, a young man does not believe this. One day in 1768, the young patient patiently watched a container being heated. The water in the container had boiled for 100 days and the water was constantly being distilled while being continuously cooled and returned to the closed container. When he carefully weighed the quality of the container, water and sediment, his face could not help but smile: the quality of the sediment was exactly equal to the reduced quality of the container, and the quality of the water did not change during the entire distillation. Using accurate scientific experiments, he effectively refuted the transformation of water, which was very popular in chemistry at that time, into soil. The young man who believes in positivism and does not blindly follow the authority is Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry.