"Cavendish proceeded to try whether free oxygen, if detonated with hydrogen, would in like manner yield water. ... [I]t was only necessary to fill the globe with a mixture of one volume of oxygen and two of hydrogen, and to explode it by the electric spark, to secure the entire conversion of the contents of the globe into water. Cavendish came as near this result, as a slight mistake in the adjustment of the combining volumes of hydrogen and oxygen, and the limits of error in such an experiment, at the period when it was made... permitted."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Life_of_the_Honble_Henry_Cavendish
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish
The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish Including Abstracts of His More Important Papers, and a Critical Inquiry into the Claims of all the Alleged Dicsoverers of the Composition of Water by George Wilson, M.D., F.R.D.E. Lecturer on Chemistry, Edinburgh, was published in 1851. It was written at the request of the Cavendish Society, and contains an authoritative biography of Henry Cavendish, a general sketch of his scientific researches and discoveries, as well as a discussion supporting Cavendish
132 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Life of the Honble Henry Cavendish →
Related Quotes
"A true hypothesis, or one in the main, true, is always found capable of explaining more than it professed or expected…"
"[P]hlogiston was held to be a material and therefore ponderable substance, so that its escape from a combustible shou…"
"That a burning body changed the quality of the air around it, whilst itself undergoing a complete change of propertie…"
"Such, then, was the crude and clumsy hypothesis which was recognised as a fundamental law of all chemistry, at the pe…"
"The discovery of oxygen, of , and of other gases, and the experiments which Priestley, Scheele, and Lavoisier had bee…"
"To discover what became of the lost air was a question which, in 1777, greatly interested... chemists... and Cavendis…"
"When those researches commenced, air was universally reputed to be a simple or elementary body. It was liable, accord…"
"When oxygen was discovered by Priestley and Scheele, it was regarded by them as air altogether respirable, and exhibi…"
"He had proceeded but a short way in his attempt to discover what became of the air apparently lost during combustion,…"
"The doctrine of phlogiston... [i]nstead of being treated as a doubtful hypothesis... was employed as a perfect theory…"