Phlogiston theory Quotes

“Cavendish, Henry”

“Priestley, Joseph”

“Liebig, Justus von”

“Lavoisier, Antoine”

“History of Science”

“History of chemistry”

“Wikipedia: Phlogiston theory”

“The calcination of a body is... the exposing of it to the action of fire, to produce some change upon it.”

“From inflammable air and dephlogisticated air water is produced.”

“It likewise appears that a given quantity of Air can be united to or saturated as it were only by a certain quantity of phlogiston...”

“These experiments seem to prove, that the transition of phlogiston into the air diminishes not always its bulk; which however other experiments clearly indicate...”

“A body, when burning, was parting with its phlogiston; and all the phenomena of combustion—the flame, heat, and light—were caused by the violence of the expulsion of that substance.”

“Certainly it is a remarkable circumstance to observe, that the phlogiston separated from bodies, either without or with a fiery motion, and united with air, always considerably diminishes the bulk of air.”

“The Conservation of Mass, Donald Simanek, Lock Haven University.”

“Air is composed of two different fluids, the one of which attracts not the phlogiston, and the other has the quality of attracting it, and this latter fluid makes between a third and a fourth of the whole bulk of the air.”

“All combustible bodies were to be regarded... as compounds, one of their constituents being phlogiston: their different natures depended partly upon the proportion of phlogiston they contain, and partly upon the nature and amount of their other constituents.”

“Respiration is a kind of combustion whereby the temperature of the body is maintained. It consists simply in the transference of the phlogiston of the body to the air. If we attempt to breathe in a confined space, the air becomes eventually saturated with the phlogiston, and respiration stops.”

“The theory of phlogiston was originally broached as a theory of combustion. According to this theory, bodies such as coal, charcoal, wood, oil, fat, etc., burn because they contain a combustible principle, which was assumed to be a material substance and uniform in character. This substance was known as phlogiston.”

“If I were giving this lecture fifty years from now, the word "gravitation" would be as old-fashioned as the word "phlogiston" is to us. Relativity has certainly demoted gravitation as a real explanation, just as Priestley's and Lavoisier's analyses and decoding of chemical reactions destroyed the word "phlogiston."”

“YouTube Videos
• Joseph Priestley by Hasok Chang*a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/wwwRSCorg" target="_blank">Royal Society Of Chemistry channel.”