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Known metals were recorded and listed in conjunctions with heavenly bodies.
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Democratic proclaims the atom to be the simplest unit of matter. all mater was composed f atoms.
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Aristotle declares the existence of only four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. All matter is made up of these four elements and matter had four properties: hot, cold, dry, and wet.
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Influenced greatly by Aristotle's ideas, alchemists attempted to transmute cheap metals to gold. The substance used for this conversion was called the Philosopher's Stone.
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Although Pope John XXII issued an edict against gold-making, the gold business continued. Despite the alchemists' efforts, the transmutation of cheap metals to gold never happened within this time period.
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Alchemists not only wanted to convert metals to gold, but they also wanted to find a chemical concoction that would enable people to live longer and cure all ailments. This elixir of life never happened either.
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The disproving of Aristotle's four-elements theory and the publishing of the book, The Skeptical Chemist (by Robert Boyle), combined to destroy this early form of chemistry.
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Johann J. Beecher believed in a substance called phlogiston. When a substance is burned, phlogiston was supposedly added from the air to the flame of the burning object. In some substances, a product is produced.
Charles Coulomb discovered that given two particles separated by a certain distance, the force of attraction or repulsion is directly proportional to the product of the two charges and is inversely proportional to the distance between the two charges. -
Joseph Priestley heated calx of mercury collected the colorless gas and burned different substances in this colorless gas. Priestley called the gas "dephlogisticated air", but it was actually oxygen. It was Antoine Lavoisier who disproved the Phlogiston Theory. He renamed the "dephlogisticated air" oxygen when he realized that the oxygen was the part of air that combines with substances as they burn. Because of Lavoisier's work, Lavoisier is now called the "Father of Modern Chemistry".
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John Dalton publishes his Atomic Theory which states that all matter is composed of atoms, which are small and indivisible.
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Heinrich Geissler creates the first vacuum tube.
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William Crookes made headway in modern atomic theory when he used the vacuum tube made by Heinrich Geissler to discover cathode rays. Crookes created a glass vacuum tube which had a zinc sulfide coating on the inside of one end, a metal cathode embedded in the other end, and a metal anode in the shape of a cross in the middle of the tube. When electricity was run through the apparatus, an image of the cross appeared and the zinc sulfide glowed.
