This IMPOSSIBLE Theory Led to the Discovery of Oxygen

Explore the rise and fall of the phlogiston theory, a revolutionary (but wrong) idea that dominated 18th-century chemistry. Learn how this fiery concept shaped scientific thought and set the stage for modern chemistry’s breakthroughs.

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Timestamps:
0:00 - The four elements
1:27 - The three earths
2:33 - The rise of phlogiston theory
5:54 - The mass problem
11:07 - The oldest book in my collection
13:40 - The introduction of pneumatic theory
15:08 - Scheele & Priestley's experiments
18:42 - Sędziwój's hypothesis
19:10 - Lavoisier's experiments
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#science #chemistry #history #oxygen #phlogiston

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ATTRIBUTIONS:

[ewantaylor]

Phlogiston theory always makes me wonder which of our current scientific models is totally wrong, but explains things well enough that we still haven't caught it.

[evan]

It's always amazing to see how intelligent the scientists and philosophers of the past really were. Purely through logic and observation they created new knowledge that was remarkably close to the actual phenomenon, all without the tools and context we take for granted today. Simply incredible work.

[HappyGingerWolf]

I love that priestly decided to inhale this new mystery fire mercury gas basically as soon as he discovered it

[jmchez]

The main proponent of executing Lavoisier was the revolutionary leader and newspaper publisher, Jean-Paul Marat.
Marat had gone to visit Lavoisier to push some sort of pseudo-scientific idea. Lavoisier was offended and rudely kicked him out of the house. Marat was, in turn, humiliated and vowed to get revenge.

It's interesting that the best known painting of Lavoisier is the one of him and his wife, painted by Jacques-Louis David. Ironically, David made an even more famous painting, "The Death of Marat".

[Tinil]

"For it could not remain united if its property were to repel and not to attract"

Well, it's a good thing Ramsay died in '16, a year before the proton was discovered. He would be very angry that protons stick together!

[acenutella]

historical chemistry is so interesting

[hugmynutus]

I always love the historic twist where some polish dude figured it out a century before but nobody took him seriously.

[LendriMujina]

If coal is almost pure phlogiston, and phlogiston has levity instead of gravity, therefore coal should fly around. You can really tell they were grasping at straws with that explanation, even without taking into account modern knowledge.

[Plan-xbhs]

Phlogiston truthers gonna be mad when they hear this

[perguto]

It's interesting to see how phlogiston theory works surprisingly well as you can roughly equate it with "negative oxygen" or low oxidation states, allowing most statements of oxygen theory to be translated to phlogiston theory and vice versa, e.g. "absorbing phlogiston"="emitting oxygen/getting reduced", "oxygen has positive mass"="phlogiston has negative mass" etc.. Kinda reminds me of how, in electrical engineering, it rarely matters whether current truly flows from + to - or - to +, or of how positrons can be described as holes in the Dirac sea of negative energy electron states

[Mnemoniforma.]

1:23 Worth noting that on the opposite side of Eurasia, alchemists had the Wu Xing, a completely different system of five elements in two complementary phases that interacted in cycles of suppression and generation.

[MP-tebt]

Your clear voice and graphics make all of your videos so easy and interesting to watch.
How amazing that you have all of those historical books?! To have all of that evidence and information in your hands must be an incredible feeling. Thanks for another great video and all of the hard work you must put in to it. Looking forward, as always, to the next one!

[SpiritmanProductions]

Oxygen being "acid-forming" is revealed in the Dutch name for oxygen: zuurstof, literally meaning acid-material. (The common ancestors of 'zuur' and 'stof' led to the English words 'sour' and 'stuff'.)

[johng]

I appreciate showing the text in old books, with their antique words, spellings, and diagrams. It helps take us back to the time.

[Bradcah]

I'm totally on board with this historical-focused approach to science education

[an_asp]

That was excellent, and I loved the inclusion of so many contemporary sources. I love seeing the reasoning of people from the past, many of whom were quite smart but were missing essential information. Not to mention, for every "phlogiston", you can also find examples of people making surprisingly correct conclusions much earlier in history than one would expect, just from clever reasoning about their observations. It really gives you a window into how a lot of the knowledge we take for granted was learned.

[ptonpc]

What always gets me is how *close* some of those ideas were to what we understand of reality now. They were not correct but you can see *why* they thought.

[billyyank]

Archaic textbooks are often fascinating. I have a reprint of a science textbook from 1844. In the chapter covering astronomy, the furthest planet known at that time was Uranus, but the book refers to the planet as Herschel, after William Herschel who discovered the planet in 1781. The measurements the book gives for “Herschel” are very close to the measurements of Uranus today.

[cargo_vroom]

If Phlogiston is antigravity, and coal is almost entirely phlogiston, why is coal in the ground not the sky? Checkmate Phloggers

[dominictarrsailing]

being able to restore the calx by heating with pure phlogiston must have seemed very compelling. I guess the oxygen moves over from the metal oxide to the carbon

The phlogiston antigravity bit made me imagine the lifting power of a phlogiston blimp! probably MUCH more dangerous than just hydrogen. However, if phlogiston is negative mass but coal, which is (almost?) pure phlogiston, is curiously heavy.

Thanks for the great video. It's really interesting to learn about the thought process people went through to produce modern science. For me personally, knowing about the history helps me to actually understand that science, a lot more than just learning about what we know now.