Experimental foundation of atomic chemistry

English chemist and physicist John Dalton extended Proust’s work and converted the atomic philosophy of the Greeks into a scientific theory between 1803 and 1808. His book A New System of Chemical Philosophy (Part I, 1808; Part II, 1810) was the first application of atomic theory to chemistry. It provided a physical picture of how elements combine to form compounds and a phenomenological reason for believing that atoms exist. His work, together with that of Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac of France and Amedeo Avogadro of Italy, provided the experimental foundation of atomic chemistry.

On the basis of the law of definite proportions, Dalton deduced the law of multiple proportions, which stated that when two elements form more than one compound by combining in more than one proportion by weight, the weight of one element in one of the compounds is in simple, integer ratios to its weights in the other compounds. For example, Dalton knew that oxygen and carbon can combine to form two different compounds and that carbon dioxide (CO₂) contains twice as much oxygen by weight as carbon monoxide (CO). In this case the ratio of oxygen in one compound to the amount of oxygen in the other is the simple integer ratio 2:1. Although Dalton called his theory “modern” to differentiate it from Democritus’s philosophy, he retained the Greek term atom to honour the ancients.

Dalton had begun his atomic studies by wondering why the different gases in the atmosphere do not separate, with the heaviest on the bottom and the lightest on the top. He decided that atoms are not infinite in variety as had been supposed and that they are limited to one of a kind for each element. Proposing that all the atoms of a given element have the same fixed mass, he concluded that elements react in definite proportions to form compounds because their constituent atoms react in definite proportion to produce compounds. He then tried to figure out the masses for well-known compounds. To do so, Dalton made a faulty but understandable assumption that the simplest hypothesis about atomic combinations was true. He maintained that the molecules of an element would always be single atoms. Thus, if two elements form only one compound, he believed that one atom of one element combined with one atom of another element. For example, describing the formation of water, he said that one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen would combine to form HO instead of H₂O. Dalton’s mistaken belief that atoms join together by attractive forces was accepted and formed the basis of most of 19th-century chemistry. As long as scientists worked with masses as ratios, a consistent chemistry could be developed because they did not need to know whether the atoms were separate or joined together as molecules.

Gay-Lussac soon took the relationship between chemical masses implied by Dalton’s atomic theory and expanded it to volumetric relationships of gases. In 1809 he published two observations about gases that have come to be known as Gay-Lussac’s law of combining gases. The first part of the law says that when gases combine chemically, they do so in numerically simple volume ratios. Gay-Lussac illustrated this part of his law with three oxides of nitrogen. The compound NO has equal parts of nitrogen and oxygen by volume. Similarly, in the compound N₂O the two parts by volume of nitrogen combine with one part of oxygen. He found corresponding volumes of nitrogen and oxygen in NO₂. Thus, Gay-Lussac’s law relates volumes of the chemical constituents within a compound, unlike Dalton’s law of multiple proportions, which relates only one constituent of a compound with the same constituent in other compounds.

The second part of Gay-Lussac’s law states that if gases combine to form gases, the volumes of the products are also in simple numerical ratios to the volume of the original gases. This part of the law was illustrated by the combination of carbon monoxide and oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Gay-Lussac noted that the volume of the carbon dioxide is equal to the volume of carbon monoxide and is twice the volume of oxygen. He did not realize, however, that the reason that only half as much oxygen is needed is because the oxygen molecule splits in two to give a single atom to each molecule of carbon monoxide. In his “Mémoire sur la combinaison des substances gazeuses, les unes avec les autres” (1809; “Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other”), Gay-Lussac wrote:

Thus it appears evident to me that gases always combine in the simplest proportions when they act on one another; and we have seen in reality in all the preceding examples that the ratio of combination is 1 to 1, 1 to 2 or 1 to 3.…Gases…in whatever proportions they may combine, always give rise to compounds whose elements by volume are multiples of each other.…Not only, however, do gases combine in very simple proportions, as we have just seen, but the apparent contraction of volume which they experience on combination has also a simple relation to the volume of the gases, or at least to one of them.

Gay-Lussac’s work raised the question of whether atoms differ from molecules and, if so, how many atoms and molecules are in a volume of gas. Amedeo Avogadro, building on Dalton’s efforts, solved the puzzle, but his work was ignored for 50 years. In 1811 Avogadro proposed two hypotheses: (1) The atoms of elemental gases may be joined together in molecules rather than existing as separate atoms, as Dalton believed. (2) Equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules. These hypotheses explained why only half a volume of oxygen is necessary to combine with a volume of carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide. Each oxygen molecule has two atoms, and each atom of oxygen joins one molecule of carbon monoxide.

Until the early 1860s, however, the allegiance of chemists to another concept espoused by eminent Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius blocked acceptance of Avogadro’s ideas. (Berzelius was influential among chemists because he had determined the atomic weights of many elements extremely accurately.) Berzelius contended incorrectly that all atoms of a similar element repel each other because they have the same electric charge. He thought that only atoms with opposite charges could combine to form molecules.

Because early chemists did not know how many atoms were in a molecule, their chemical notation systems were in a state of chaos by the mid-19th century. Berzelius and his followers, for example, used the general formula MO for the chief metallic oxides, while others assigned the formula used today, M₂O. A single formula stood for different substances, depending on the chemist: H₂O₂ was water or hydrogen peroxide; C₂H₄ was methane or ethylene. Proponents of the system used today based their chemical notation on an empirical law formulated in 1819 by the French scientists Pierre-Louis Dulong and Alexis-Thérèse Petit concerning the specific heat of elements. According to the Dulong-Petit law, the specific heat of all elements is the same on a per atom basis. This law, however, was found to have many exceptions and was not fully understood until the development of quantum theory in the 20th century.

To resolve such problems of chemical notation, Sicilian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro revived Avogadro’s ideas in 1858 and expounded them at the First International Chemical Congress, which met in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1860. Lothar Meyer, a noted German chemistry professor, wrote later that when he heard Avogadro’s theory at the congress, “It was as though scales fell from my eyes, doubt vanished, and was replaced by a feeling of peaceful certainty.” Within a few years, Avogadro’s hypotheses were widely accepted in the world of chemistry.

Atomic weights and the periodic table

As more and more elements were discovered during the 19th century, scientists began to wonder how the physical properties of the elements were related to their atomic weights. During the 1860s several schemes were suggested. Russian chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev based his system on the atomic weights of the elements as determined by Avogadro’s theory of diatomic molecules. In his paper of 1869 introducing the periodic law, he credited Cannizzaro for using “unshakeable and indubitable” methods to determine atomic weights.

The elements, if arranged according to their atomic weights, show a distinct periodicity of their properties.…Elements exhibiting similarities in their chemical behavior have atomic weights which are approximately equal (as in the case of Pt, Ir, Os) or they possess atomic weights which increase in a uniform manner (as in the case of K, Rb, Cs).

Skipping hydrogen because it is anomalous, Mendeleyev arranged the 63 elements known to exist at the time into six groups according to valence. Valence, which is the combining power of an element, determines the proportions of the elements in a compound. For example, H₂O combines oxygen with a valence of 2 and hydrogen with a valence of 1. Recognizing that chemical qualities change gradually as atomic weight increases, Mendeleyev predicted that a new element must exist wherever there was a gap in atomic weights between adjacent elements. His system was thus a research tool and not merely a system of classification. Mendeleyev’s periodic table raised an important question, however, for future atomic theory to answer: Where does the pattern of atomic weights come from?