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Chemistry
Reactions & Everyday Chemistry
What happens when substances meet, and why.
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What is the chemical formula for water?
Discoveries That Made Chemistry
Chemistry became a real science remarkably quickly, mostly between the 1770s and the early 1900s. These ten discoveries are the ones that did it.
About this topic
For most of its history chemistry ran on a theory that was simply wrong. Burning was thought to release a substance called phlogiston, and it took careful weighing to show that things gain mass when they burn rather than losing it. Once that fell, the rest followed quickly: atoms with fixed weights, elements pulled apart by electricity, molecules with definite shapes. Several of the discoveries here were accidents. A teenager chasing a malaria drug produced the first synthetic dye instead. A chemist trying to make one salt produced a compound that had only ever been found in living things, and quietly demolished the idea that life ran on different rules.
Questions & answers
Discoveries That Made Chemistry: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1Which chemist named oxygen and showed that the phlogiston theory of burning was wrong?
- A Henry Cavendish
- B Antoine Lavoisier Correct
- C Joseph Priestley
- D Robert Boyle
Answer: B. Antoine Lavoisier
Why: Lavoisier demonstrated that burning combines a substance with a gas from the air rather than releasing anything, and he named that gas oxygen. He was guillotined in 1794 during the Terror, at the age of 50.
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2Which chemist first isolated sodium and potassium, using electricity to break their compounds apart?
- A Humphry Davy Correct
- B Michael Faraday
- C Joseph Priestley
- D John Dalton
Answer: A. Humphry Davy
Why: Davy used a large voltaic pile in 1807 to separate metals nobody had ever seen in pure form. His laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution was a young Michael Faraday.
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3Who proposed in the early 1800s that every element is made of identical atoms with a characteristic weight?
- A J.J. Thomson
- B Amedeo Avogadro
- C Robert Boyle
- D John Dalton Correct
Answer: D. John Dalton
Why: Dalton's atomic theory gave chemists a way to explain why elements always combine in fixed proportions. He was also the first person to describe colour blindness in print, working from his own case.
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4Friedrich Wöhler's 1828 production of urea mattered because it showed what?
- A One element can be turned into another
- B Living cells are mostly water
- C A compound made by living things could be made from non-living chemicals Correct
- D Proteins are built from amino acids
Answer: C. A compound made by living things could be made from non-living chemicals
Why: Urea had only ever been found in living organisms, and Wöhler made it from an ordinary inorganic salt. The result undercut vitalism, the belief that the chemistry of life obeyed a separate set of rules.
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5William Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye by accident while trying to make what?
- A A synthetic rubber
- B A treatment for malaria Correct
- C An artificial perfume
- D A photographic developer
Answer: B. A treatment for malaria
Why: Perkin was 18 and working on quinine when he produced a purple sludge that turned out to dye silk beautifully. Mauveine made him wealthy and effectively created the industrial organic chemistry business.
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6Which chemist worked out the ring structure of benzene?
- A August Kekulé Correct
- B Justus von Liebig
- C Emil Fischer
- D Louis Pasteur
Answer: A. August Kekulé
Why: Kekulé proposed the closed six-carbon ring in 1865, and later said the idea came to him in a daydream of a snake biting its own tail. Michael Faraday had isolated the substance itself forty years earlier without knowing its shape.
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7Marie Curie named which element after her home country?
- A Radium
- B Francium
- C Curium
- D Polonium Correct
Answer: D. Polonium
Why: She and Pierre Curie identified polonium in 1898 and named it for Poland, which at that point had been partitioned off the map. She remains the only person to have won Nobel prizes in two different sciences.
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8Which experiment showed that an atom has a tiny, dense nucleus at its centre?
- A Weighing gases before and after a reaction
- B Shining light through a prism
- C Firing alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil Correct
- D Passing electricity through a vacuum tube
Answer: C. Firing alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil
Why: A small fraction of the particles bounced almost straight back, which Rutherford compared to a shell rebounding off tissue paper. The result killed off the earlier model in which an atom's positive charge was spread evenly throughout it.
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9The Haber process, developed just before the First World War, makes which compound?
- A Chlorine
- B Ammonia Correct
- C Sulphuric acid
- D Ethanol
Answer: B. Ammonia
Why: It combines nitrogen from the air with hydrogen over a catalyst, turning an unreactive gas into something plants can use. The fertiliser that came out of it supports a large share of the food grown today.
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10Which material, created by Leo Baekeland in 1907, was the first fully synthetic plastic?
- A Bakelite Correct
- B Celluloid
- C Nylon
- D Polythene
Answer: A. Bakelite
Why: Bakelite was hard, heat-resistant and a good insulator, so it ended up in radios, telephones and electrical fittings everywhere. Celluloid came earlier but was made by treating plant cellulose rather than built from scratch.
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