Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Chemical reactions are usually characterized by a chemical change, and they yield one or more products, which usually have properties different from the reactants. Reactions often consist of a sequence of individual sub-steps, the so-called elementary reactions , and the information on the precise course of action is part of the reaction ...
The term transmutation dates back to alchemy.Alchemists pursued the philosopher's stone, capable of chrysopoeia – the transformation of base metals into gold. [3] While alchemists often understood chrysopoeia as a metaphor for a mystical or religious process, some practitioners adopted a literal interpretation and tried to make gold through physical experimentation.
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. [1] It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during reactions with other substances.
Since virtually all chemical processes and many physical ones involve such changes, his work has significantly impacted both the theoretical and experiential aspects of these sciences. In 1877, Ludwig Boltzmann established statistical derivations of many important physical and chemical concepts, including entropy , and distributions of ...
The particles of chemical matter for which chemists and other natural philosophers of the early 19th century found experimental evidence were thought to be indivisible, and therefore were given by John Dalton the name "atom", long used by the atomist philosophy.
Activation energy can be thought of as the magnitude of the potential barrier (sometimes called the energy barrier) separating minima of the potential energy surface pertaining to the initial and final thermodynamic state. For a chemical reaction to proceed at a reasonable rate, the temperature of the system should be high enough such that ...
Chemical energy is the energy of chemical substances that is released when the substances undergo a chemical reaction and transform into other substances. Some examples of storage media of chemical energy include batteries, [1] food, and gasoline (as well as oxygen gas, which is of high chemical energy due to its relatively weak double bond [2] and indispensable for chemical-energy release in ...
An image from John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy, the first modern explanation of atomic theory.. This timeline of chemistry lists important works, discoveries, ideas, inventions, and experiments that significantly changed humanity's understanding of the modern science known as chemistry, defined as the scientific study of the composition of matter and of its interactions.