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Cavendish?


bluescience

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I do not know much about the history of science, but for sure Cavendish did lots of work on gases and the properites of different gases. It is therefore possible he knew Boyle's Law and maybe others. I do nor know what Cavendish published and what can be found in his non-published notes.

 

As for his being shy, several historians have suggested mental problems like autism. Again I am not really an expert in science history, so you will have to do some resarch yourself.

 

My suggestion is do some 'googleing' and find a good biography.

 

Good luck and let us know what you find.

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Is it true that Cavendish did indeed discover most of the gas laws before the the people they are named after?

And also why was he such an introvert?

 

first topic in the chemistry section.

Gas law is physics, not chemistry.

and second question is rather.. psychology?

Neither one fits chemistry section though..

Edited by Sensei
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It was a slip of the tongue. Of course I meant "gas law is physics".

News to me; I learned it in chemistry.

I'm not the only one.

http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Core/Physical_Chemistry/Physical_Properties_of_Matter/States_of_Matter/Gases/Gas_Laws/The_Ideal_Gas_Law

 

and I suspect that the people who use it are more likely to be chemists and chemical engineers than physicists.

 

 

At the time when it was discovered I'm not sure that the words "chemistry" and "physics " were in common use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyle%27s_law

I'm reminded of this

http://xkcd.com/435/

 

 

It hardly matters because the issue is one of the history of science; there isn't a "history of science" section, so it's bound to be in the wrong place.

Edited by John Cuthber
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News to me; I learned it in chemistry.

 

It matters when you learned it the first time, not the last time.

I had it the first time, on physics, in primary school, or early high school

 

Ideal gas law was proposed by Clapeyron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoît_Paul_Émile_Clapeyron

"Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron 26 February 1799 – 28 January 1864) was a French engineer and physicist, one of the founders of thermodynamics."

(wikipedia doesn't mention he was chemist, according to current terminology)

 

Everybody who is doing thermodynamics starts from ideal gas law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics

"Thermodynamics is a branch of physics concerned with heat and temperature and their relation to energy and work."

 

Obviously chemistry lesson must have it, so the same as lessons about protons and electrons bound together to form Hydrogen, then to H2 gas, and how to make it, in reaction releasing this gas.

So the same electronics lessons mentioning about electrons. It's quite inevitable.

 

Classic physics deal with physical object changing state (like solid<->liquid<->gas<->plasma), and how they behave over time, in some system, and never deal with change of contents of compounds.

Nobody will be learning on physics what happens if you use HCl + NaOH->NaCl+H2O. It belongs to chemistry lessons.

In the case of quantum physics, decay of unstable isotope to other element, change this. But it's special case.

Edited by Sensei
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It matters when you learned it the first time, not the last time.

 

Ideal gas law was proposed by Clapeyron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoît_Paul_Émile_Clapeyron

"Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron 26 February 1799 – 28 January 1864)

 

If you had to learn it a second time, you didn't learn it the first time.

So to say I learned it in chemistry tells you that I learned it in Chemistry.

I may well have subsequently been reminded of it lots of other things.

Monsieur Clapeyron was roughly two hundred years late, since Boyle discovered (at least part of) it in 1662 and Jaques Charles drafted his law in the 1780s

Edited by John Cuthber
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If you had to learnt a second time, you didn't learn it the first time.

 

You didn't understand. Physics and chemistry lessons are typically learned by different teachers.

So they don't know each other what and which students know already, and knowledge is often repeated for everybody, even often overlapping.

Same was f.e. with electronics lessons and physics. I had ohm law on physics, then on electronics. Repeating does not hurt. It's a way to better memorize knowledge.

Edited by Sensei
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You didn't understand. Physics and chemistry lessons are typically learned by different teachers.

So they don't know each other what and which students know already, and knowledge is often repeated for everybody, even often overlapping.

Same was f.e. with electronics lessons and physics. I had ohm law on physics, then on electronics. Repeating does not hurt. It's a way to better memorize knowledge.

So, if my school timetable had put my chemistry lesson on Monday and my physics lesson on Tuesday, the gas laws would be chemistry, but, if they put the physics first then the same laws would be physics.

 

Well, I guess it's a point of view...

 

However the gas laws are unequivocally part of chemistry (whether they are part of physics or not).

Incidentally you need to find out the difference between taught and learned.

That's especially ironic, given your "name".

 

Incidentally, have you noticed that none of this has a lot to do with the OP's question?

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I do not know much about the history of science, but for sure Cavendish did lots of work on gases and the properites of different gases. It is therefore possible he knew Boyle's Law and maybe others. I do nor know what Cavendish published and what can be found in his non-published notes.

 

As for his being shy, several historians have suggested mental problems like autism. Again I am not really an expert in science history, so you will have to do some resarch yourself.

 

My suggestion is do some 'googleing' and find a good biography.

 

Good luck and let us know what you find.

Um...WOW...most explosive topic ihve had so far...Yeah, i learned all the laws in chemistry this year, so i thought i would put it in the chem section.

 

Oh and yes, after a little research i did found out that a physicist named James Clerk Maxwell found Cavendish's paper and found that he had indeed found most of the gas laws before the people they were named after. So i guess that is proof.

However i couldn't find anything on why he was such an introvert...so i think it was just something of his childhood or anytime in his past.

Also did you know that he was the first to find the mass of the earth and recent scientists have only improved that measurement by less than 1%.

And to do so he had to use an instrument that he had to observe the measurements from a separate room, using a telescope.

Edited by bluescience
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Um...WOW...most explosive topic ihve had so far...Yeah, i learned all the laws in chemistry this year, so i thought i would put it in the chem section.

It is off topic really... gas laws fit in physics or chemistry in my opinion. It is not really a bit issue I would say.

 

Also thanks for the update.

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Lots of things over lap physics and chemistry... gas laws, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, spectroscopy etc... My first degree was in Chemical Physics - which looks directly at such overlaps in more detail. People try to tell me that Physical Chemistry is the same thing... not in this country - Physical chemistry means rates of reactions, gas laws etc... chemical physics is a whole area where they is any overlap. For example - Spectroscopy is thought of as chemical physics, not physical chemistry. This might be different in the US as I have heard people use different terminology for the same things... Again, it could be different elsewhere... it doesn't really matter I suppose.

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Oh and yes, after a little research i did found out that a physicist named James Clerk Maxwell found Cavendish's paper and found that he had indeed found most of the gas laws before the people they were named after.

 

According to Stigler's Law, no scientific law is named after the discoverer. Including Stigler's Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler's_law_of_eponymy

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