lavoisier bell jar experiment

Distillations magazine

Revolutionary instruments: lavoisier’s tools as objets d’art.

In 1788 Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and Jacques-Louis David were introduced during a sitting for the illustrious scientist’s portrait.

In 1788, just as the stage was set for revolution, France’s most celebrated scientist met with France’s most celebrated artist. This sitting for a portrait of the illustrious scientist and his wife may not have been an entirely cordial meeting. The scientist, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794), was one of the king’s men; the artist, Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), would four years later vote for the king’s execution. The rencontre yielded an immense canvas still regarded as one of the greatest portraits of the 18th century.

The meeting in 1788 between Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) resulted in one of David’s finest portraits, an icon of the Enlightenment now hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting shows Lavoisier and his wife and partner in science, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze (1758–1836). Behind Mme. Lavoisier is a folio, indicating that she is an artist. (As a younger woman, Mme. Lavoisier had studied painting under David’s tutelage, and she may have been the one who instigated the meeting between her husband and her teacher.) In the background of the painting are several pilasters, a signature of David’s neoclassical style. But the most important symbols of Lavoisier’s career are the pieces of chemical equipment. Never mind that they belong in the laboratory and look strangely out of place on a writing desk. They are shown prominently in Lavoisier’s studio so that the viewer knows that this elegant man was a chemist.

It would be interesting to know how the specific pieces of equipment depicted in the portrait were chosen. One can imagine the Lavoisiers showing David their nearly 200 pieces of scientific equipment, many of them beautifully crafted by Nicolas Fortin, Lavoisier’s instrument maker since 1783. Lavoisier and his wife might have chosen pieces for their scientific significance, but David was likely also looking for pieces that would contribute to the overall composition of the portrait. He might also have wanted to paint instruments that would showcase his own skill as a painter at representing reflective surfaces —and this they certainly accomplish. The viewer has no doubt that the glass is glass, the brass is brass, the water is water, and the mercury is mercury.

It may be that the work on Lavoisier’s desk is the manuscript of Traité élémentaire de chimie , which one year after the painting was created would introduce to the world the basic concepts and nomenclature of modern chemistry. The scientific community recognized its importance immediately. Published first in Paris in 1789, it was quickly translated into English as Elements of Chemistry , and Lavoisier became the acknowledged leader of the Chemical Revolution. The popularity of the Traité led to a second edition, published in Paris in 1793, less than a year before Lavoisier stepped up to the guillotine on 8 May 1794. His chemical revolution was well under way as his head and body were carted off to a mass grave.

In the first of the two volumes of the Traité , Lavoisier presents the conclusions and principles derived from his experiments. The second volume describes his experimental methods in detail. Appended to the second volume are 13 plates that show some 170 pieces of laboratory equipment finely drawn to scale by Mme. Lavoisier. Most of these flasks, bottles, jars, siphons, furnaces, tables, and basins do not grace David’s portrait, and those that do are probably the best-known pieces of laboratory glassware in the art world. They also were vital components in several of Lavoisier’s experiments —experiments in which he discovered scientific principles that lie at the very center of modern chemistry.

Mass of Reactants = Mass of Reaction Products

As one might strengthen a rectangular gate with a diagonal brace, David strengthened his rectangular portrait with strong diagonals from the upper left-hand corner to the lower right. Mme. Lavoisier’s right arm, Lavoisier’s quill, the bright fold in the table cover, Lavoisier’s unnaturally long leg, and a beam of light coming from the upper left window all point to a glass balloon on the floor at the lower right of the canvas. The gleaming balloon shows David’s skill to great effect, but it is also important for its use in the establishment of the law of the conservation of mass.

Lavoisier was a superb quantitative chemist, a master of the volumetric flask, the beam balance, the barometer, and the thermometer. Most of his quantitative experiments were performed in closed systems and involved either the consumption or production of gases, which were measured in volumes. In order to balance his equations, the volumes of gases had to be converted to masses. To determine the mass per volume of atmospheric air, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide, he weighed the gases in glass balloons, like the one in David’s painting, with capacities of about 17 liters. Each balloon had a brass cap cemented to its neck, through which a metal tube with a stopcock was soldered. Lavoisier measured the balloon’s precise volume by weighing it first empty and again filled with water. He then dried the balloon and evacuated it as much as possible using a brass air pump, visible in the painting. He then closed the stopcock and screwed it to a reaction vessel that contained the gas to be weighed. As the stopcock was opened, the gas rushed into the balloon. Lavoisier then closed the stopcock and weighed the balloon again with, as he writes in the Traité , “the most scrupulous exactitude.” He subtracted the weight of the evacuated balloon and made corrections for temperature, pressure, and incomplete evacuation by the air pump. It is remarkable that the ratios of his measured weights of various gases are not very different from the ratios of their molecular weights, of which Lavoisier had no knowledge. Once established, his volume-to-mass conversion factors would allow him to compare masses of reactants and reaction products.

The law of conservation of mass, which French students call Lavoisier’s law, would soon have enormous repercussions not only for quantitative chemistry but also for understanding the very nature of matter. Lavoisier had shown that regardless of the physical state of the substances involved in a chemical reaction, the total mass of the system must remain unchanged. Such a concept required some number of indestructible particles of constant weight to be present in the reactants and in equal numbers in the reaction products. This led to the atomic hypothesis of the English chemist John Dalton and to the modern understanding of the physical structure of matter.

Water → Hydrogen + Oxygen

The middle instrument on the table is a glass tube about 2 inches in diameter and 24 inches in length, with a flared mouth. This plain and simple device adds to the verticality of the objects on the table, but it also had great meaning for Lavoisier and the Chemical Revolution. With it he was able to show that water was not elemental, but rather that it could be further broken down into hydrogen and oxygen.

Since ancient times water had been considered a basic element. But by 1781 the world was forever changed when water was shown to be, of all things, a combination of two gases. Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, James Watt, and Lavoisier all contributed to that momentous discovery, with Priestley producing water by heating lead oxide in an atmosphere of hydrogen and Cavendish and Watt producing it by burning hydrogen in atmospheric air. All three were so preoccupied with trying to explain their findings in terms of phlogiston theory that it remained for Lavoisier, who in 1783 repeated Cavendish’s earlier experiments, to interpret the reaction correctly: water was being synthesized from hydrogen and oxygen.

But Lavoisier felt that proof of the composition of water was not complete. In the Traité he wrote: “Chemistry affords two general methods of determining the constituent principles of bodies, the method of analysis, and that of synthesis. It ought to be considered as a principle in chemical science, never to rest satisfied without both these species of proofs.” He set out to show the reverse of Cavendish’s synthetic experiment through his own analytic one: the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen.

With the tube completely filled with mercury and inverted in a basin of mercury, as in the portrait, Lavoisier introduced under the lip of the tube small amounts of water and iron filings, both of which floated to the top. The filings gradually lost their metallic luster, and he knew from earlier oxidation experiments that the iron was becoming oxidized, thus removing oxygen from the water. As the iron oxide accumulated on the surface of the mercury, gas collected in the top of the tube. He sampled the gas and found that it burned quietly with a white flame. It was “inflammable air,” which he would later call hydrogen, because it had been “born of water.” Lavoisier considered this the final proof that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen.

Ethyl Alcohol + Oxygen → Carbon Dioxide + Water

The vessel at Lavoisier’s left hand was suitable for storing oxygen and regulating its release by the stopcock at the top. Surprisingly, it is not included in Mme. Lavoisier’s illustrated inventory, although she did depict functionally similar pieces; it may have been acquired after her plates for the text had been completed. David has given this engaging piece a commanding position on the desk. With its long stem and brass cap, this masterpiece of Nicolas Fortin resembles a giant gold-lipped goblet. There are two stopcocks, one in the stem and one in the metal tube leading out of the airtight brass cap. A long glass tube passes through the cap and down to the bottom of the vessel.

In the Traité Lavoisier described the use of similar vessels. The glass foot of the stem is submerged in a basin of water, and the glass tube is plugged (as it is in the painting). With both stopcocks open, an air pump, screwed to the top stopcock, removes the air from the vessel, causing the water from the basin below to flow into it. Once the vessel is emptied of air and filled with water, the upper stopcock is closed. The glass tube is then attached to an oxygen generator, which produces oxygen by heating either mercuric oxide or red lead oxide. As the oxygen bubbles up through the water, the displaced water exits through the lower stopcock. When sufficient oxygen has accumulated, the glass tube is plugged, the lower stopcock is closed, and the vessel is ready for use as an oxygen storage tank. Certain experiments required a carefully controlled flow of oxygen from the storage tank, and for that the upper stopcock was critical. This is illustrated by an experiment whereby Lavoisier determined the composition of spirit of wine (ethyl alcohol) by combustion.

Lavoisier created a combustion chamber by inverting a bell jar in a basin of mercury and withdrawing part of the air so that the mercury level would rise. He slipped an alcohol lamp containing spirit of wine with “a small morsel” of phosphorus in the wick into the mercury under the lip of the bell jar. It floated to the surface of the mercury, where Lavoisier lit it by quickly pushing a red-hot wire up through the mercury to the lamp and igniting the phosphorus in the lamp’s wick. Thus spirit of wine burned in a closed system of atmospheric air. In pure oxygen the rate of burning would have been explosive, but with the nitrogen of the atmospheric air as a moderator the flame was manageable. As oxygen was consumed by the burning alcohol, water accumulated on the surface of the mercury but the flame grew weaker. To keep the flame going, Lavoisier allowed additional oxygen from the storage vessel, carefully regulated by the upper stopcock, to bubble up through the mercury and into the combustion chamber. In the storage vessel, as oxygen was released via the stopcock, the main chamber filled with the water from its underlying basin by way of the open stopcock in the stem. Too slow a flow of oxygen would extinguish the flame; too rapid a flow would risk overheating and cracking or exploding the bell jar. Lavoisier had learned the hard way that burning alcohol in oxygen in a closed system was hazardous. In his Traité he tells of an instance that “had very near proved fatal to myself, in the presence of some members of the Academy. A violent explosion took place, which threw the jar with great violence against the floor of the laboratory, and dashed it in a thousand pieces.”

When the flame was finally extinguished by the buildup of carbon dioxide in the combustion chamber, Lavoisier closed the stopcock on the oxygen storage tank. Lavoisier had measured the initial weight of the lamp and spirit of wine, as well as the volume of oxygen in the storage tank and the volume of atmospheric air in the combustion vessel. He weighed the water present on the surface of the mercury by withdrawing it with a curved pipette, and after the combustion chamber was dismantled he again weighed the lamp. Before dismantling, Lavoisier measured the volumes of the gases in the system before and after injecting a potassium hydroxide solution into the chamber through the mercury to absorb out the carbon dioxide and by measuring the remaining gas volume, correcting for standard temperature and pressure. The volume of the initial atmospheric air was subtracted, and the gas volumes were converted to weights. The weights of the reactants, alcohol and oxygen, could then be compared with the weights of the products, carbon dioxide and water, to balance the chemical equation.

This and similar procedures with other plant materials led Lavoisier to conclude that “the true constituent elements of vegetables are hydrogen, oxygen, and charcoal [carbon]: These are common to all vegetables, and no vegetable can exist without them.” The door to organic chemistry had been opened. Lavoisier’s experiments showed that the combustion of organic substances resembled animal respiration, consuming oxygen and producing water and carbon dioxide. This bolstered his long-held theory that animal respiration was a form of slow combustion. He would later show that a human being consumes oxygen at a rate proportional to the amount of physical work being done, opening the door to physiological chemistry.

From Portraiture to Politics

At the time the portrait was painted the Chemical Revolution had been firmly established. Now, thanks largely to Lavoisier, balanced chemical equations could be written; heat could be quantified; air and water (considered primordial elements since antiquity) could be broken down into their components; and, as chemical compounds were given compound names, chemistry could be discussed with a new and reasonable nomenclature. Respiration, that mysterious pneuma of the ancients, had become a chemical reaction akin to the burning of an alcohol lamp.

Lavoisier’s instruments are masterfully painted by David, and their realism is astonishing. But as the paint dried, the tools of the Chemical Revolution went back onto laboratory shelves. Lavoisier supervised the government’s gunpowder manufacture and collaborated in collecting taxes for Louis XVI. David, a radical revolutionary, continued his support of the National Convention. The two men went their very separate ways into the political revolution, David as its champion and Lavoisier as its victim.

It would remain for Mme. Lavoisier, the real centerpiece of David’s painting, to promote the contributions that she and her husband had made. After her husband’s death she retrieved the proofs of his unfinished Mémoires de chimie and managed to publish these classic papers, which contained his final interpretations of his work, in 1805. She continued to promote her husband’s discoveries and to be an important figure in the scientific and intellectual life of Paris. But there must have been moments when she longed for those days spent in the laboratory working with her husband, surrounded by the beautiful objets d’art of Nicolas Fortin.

David belonged to a political revolution—Lavoisier to a scientific one. For a brief historical moment these revolutionaries combined their genius to create a work that beautifully captures the brilliance of the social, political, and intellectual upheaval that whirled around them.

Horton A. Johnson is former director of pathology at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Medical Center, New York City, and professor of pathology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is also a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Lavoisier and the Discovery of   Combustion

Lavoisier started by using mercury. When heated, mercury formed mercury oxide, in the form of small red balls.  Lavoisier was interested in the composition of this red solid.  Therefore he tried to reduce the mercury oxide:  Lavoisier placed an ounce of mercury oxide and 48 grains of coal in a round-bottomed flask with the neck of the flask extending into a tube.  This mixture was heated.  The end of the tube from the flask 

was placed into a bowl of water with the opening of the tube directly underneath a semi-submerged bell jar. As gas is produced in the flask, the gas travels through the tube and into the bell jar, thus displacing the water in the bell jar.  The water level at the start and end of the experiment was measured.

According to his scientific observations, a colourless gas was released.  The most important property of this gas was that a candle extinguished in its presence almost instantaneously.  Also, it reacted with Lime Water to form a cloudy solution.  These properties were characteristic of 'fixed air'- a gas which we now call Carbon Dioxide.

Given the fact that in the first experiment the coal had completely disappeared and that fixed air had been produced, whereas in the second experiment only respirable air was produced, Lavoisier concluded that fixed air was composed of respirable air and coal.

However, Lavoisier needed more experimental data to explain the release of respirable air in the second experiment.

For his other experiments on calcination, Lavoisier chose phosphorus as the element burns readily and produces phosphoric acid.

Having placed 1/2 g of phosphorus in an open flask, he weighed the flask and phosphorus together and then placed the flask under a bell jar, partially submerged in a bowl of mercury.

After having lit the phosphorus, Lavoisier noted that the mass of the flask had increased by 0.3g whereas the volume of air in the bell jar had increased by 0.3L, leaving the bell jar with a higher percentage of fixed air than normal air.  Therefore it follows that the air in the bell jar was fixed by the phosphorus and that this fixation explains the increase in mass of the flask and its content.

Therefore a certain percentage of the air can be fixed.  This particular type of air,  respirable air, was released by the mercury oxide in the second experiment.  Lavoisier concluded from this that Calcination consisted of the fixation of air as opposed to the release of Phlogiston.  It was by questioning the existence of Phlogiston that Lavoisier was able to prove Stahl's theory wrong.  He also showed that the air in the atmosphere consisted if at least 2 gases: fixed air and oxygen.

The Encyclopedia of Science's Frontier

Read Time: 10 minutes

O, the Drama! The discovery of oxygen

How oxygen’s controversial discovery dismantled the phologiston era and changed science forever..

Posted on February 20, 2020 December 5, 2023 by Sciworthy

What is lethal, invisible, and surrounds you all the time? Give up? Well, don’t be disheartened. The answer to this riddle eluded scientists for over 2,000 years before Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier came onto the scene! Outside of Lavoisier’s unpopular political alignment at the time, and his unfortunate assassination during the French Revolution, Lavoisier contributed more to our modern understanding of science than many might know, and helped discover that lethal, invisible gas known as oxygen. So, how did Lavoisier accomplish such a feat? 

In the late 1700s, the prevailing view among scientists was that air, and anything else that was combustible, had inside it a substance they called “phlogiston”, which was released upon burning. This was scientists’ premiere explanation for fire and combustion. Moreover, scientists were also entrenched in the belief that water was an element; a pure and uniform substance that cannot be broken down into smaller parts. Today, we know that water is made of one oxygen molecule and two hydrogen atoms (H 2 O).

In 1772, Lavoisier focused his attention on the process of combustion. While Lavoisier was hard at work researching the combustible properties of the two pure elements phosphorus and sulfur, as well as compounds similar to rust, he came across the work of Joseph Black. Black had recently published a study of the properties of a product he called “fixed air” that was released from compounds containing metals such as sodium and calcium and other lighter metals. Lavoisier reasoned that this “fixed air” must be the same air that was being produced during his combustion experiments. 

Then, in 1774, Lavoisier was visited by English and cutting-edge combustion scientist Joseph Priestly who shared with Lavoisier an experiment that involved the burning of a mercury compound called “red calcx”  and its results. Priestley had discovered that the gas released from this experiment was more flammable and easier to breath than common air. Lavoisier continued to study this phenomenon and concluded that the released gas was a unique element with distinct chemical properties. Moreover, Lavoisier correctly assumed that it was the pure air that was reacting with metals as well as non-metals during combustion. He astutely observed that no matter the material that was burned, the product always ended up more acidic than its reactant, and thus named the chemical in the pure air “oxygen,” from the Greek words meaning “acid former”. However, Priestley was a supporter of the phlogiston hypothesis and claimed that Lavoisier had created or isolated dephlogisticated air, a gas which had been deprived of its phlogiston, and was thus more flammable and purer than “common air”, and so the scientific community split.

After consulting with Priestley, Lavoisier decided that the secret behind convincing others of the existence of oxygen might be hidden within a common by-product of the combustion process; water. Thus, he turned his attention to studying the properties and composition of water, which many thought was an element at the time.

Meanwhile, back in England, another scientist Henry Cavendish recently published his findings on what he called inflammable air (later to be called hydrogen). Here’s where things get dramatic: Lavoisier was informed of Cavendish’s experiment and it’s result by resident bad-boy scientist Charles Blagden a full year before the study was published. This allowed Lavoisier to get a jump on the rest of the chemists at the time. In modern day science, this is called “scooping,” and is frowned upon as being unethical.

Lavoisier came to a sudden conclusion that water was not an element after all, but the combination of this “inflammable gas” with Priestley’s “pure common air”. After teaming up with some famous 18th century scientists such as Pierre Simon de Laplace and Jean-Baptiste Meusnier, Lavoisier worked to synthesize water from hydrogen and oxygen, though they were not yet called hydrogen and oxygen.

In one of his experiments, Lavoisier filled a glass dome called a bell jar with oxygen and introduced hydrogen and a spark simultaneously. This formed water droplets on the inside of the bell jar. He was even able to reasonably predict the amount of water that would be produced from the reaction. However, scientists continued to doubt Lavoisier’s conclusions that the elements were combining to create water, and instead said that water was part of the phlogiston combustion process that was occurring when the air ignited. In order to further prove his point, Lavoisier decided to separate water without combustion or fire. By flowing water through an iron tube that was red hot, the oxygen in the water combined with the iron to make iron oxide, and hydrogen gas was produced and escaped out the other end of the tube. Now he had proof that water could be broken down into more components. Although many still doubted his results, he began to invite chemists, scientists, and opponents alike into his lab to conduct the experiments for them, consistently breaking down and synthesizing water as the final product in two separate, unrelated reactions. 

Soon after his invention, he published the book Elements of Chemistry : what many scientists claim as the first and most foundational chemistry textbook. Elements of Chemistry laid out cutting-edge and incredibly important principles of chemistry, such as the principle of the conservation of mass, a new, universal chemical naming system that we still use today, and a clear definition for an element. Sadly, due to Antoine Lavoisier’s economic beliefs, wealth, and prominent position within the French regime, he was erroneously beheaded during the French Revolution. Nevertheless, his work lives on as one of the foundations of our modern understanding of chemistry.

Additional References

• https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/lavoisier.html
• https://archive.org/details/edgeofobjectivit00char/page/228
• https://books.google.com/books?id=N9ifbmgWLAIC&pg=PA115#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/traiteyeyleyment1lavo
• https://www.beautifulchemistry.net/lavoisier

Study Information

Original study : Traité élémentaire de chimie (Originally published in French)

Study was published on : 1789

Study author(s) : Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

The study was funded by :

Raw data availability :

Featured image credit : See page for author / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

This summary was edited by : Gina Misra

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The Father of Modern Chemistry: Why We Read Lavoisier

By    dr. john j. goyette.

Dean, Thomas Aquinas College

The following remarks are adapted from Dean John J. Goyette’s report to the Board of Governors at its May 11, 2018, meeting. They are part of an  ongoing series  of talks about why the College includes certain texts in its curriculum.

Lavoisier is famous not only for his chemical theories but also for his work in the laboratory. Not only did he conduct his own experiments, but he manufactured most of his own scientific equipment; with the assistance of his wife, he produced exquisite drawings of this equipment so that both his results and the equipment he used to obtain them could be faithfully reproduced by other chemists.

He made a wealth of discoveries about various sorts of chemical combinations and reactions, notably the nature of combustion and the composition of water from hydrogen and oxygen. He also helped to revise the nomenclature used by chemists for chemical compounds and the elements from which they come. At the time of his death, he was at the height of his career, having recently published his monumental work, The Elements of Chemistry . Unfortunately for both him and us, because of his role in a financial company that collected taxes, he was a victim of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. So his very productive career was cut short — excuse the pun — by the guillotine.

Lavoisier pioneered the modern methods of chemical analysis, especially the careful measurement of the weights of reactants in and products of chemical combination. In the course of his experimental work, he anticipated the weight laws that led to the development of the atomic theory and ultimately to the periodic table of the elements. Lavoisier supplied repeated instances of what later chemists called the law of fixed proportions: that the elements in a chemical compound are in a fixed proportion by weight, regardless of how a compound is produced, whether by the forces of nature or synthesized in a lab.

Additionally, Lavoisier noted the capacity of several substances to combine with oxygen in greater and lesser ratios, and his analysis showed that the differing amounts of oxygen that combine with a given substance are in simple, whole-number ratios. That is, in effect, what chemists call the law of multiple proportions. This discovery is important for the science of chemistry because John Dalton would later argue that the whole-number ratios are best explained by positing atoms, that is, the elements combine in fixed units that remain undivided during chemical reaction.

Lavoisier is most famous for his argument that combustion is the result of a flammable substance combining with one of the gases in the atmosphere, which he named “oxygen.” Up until his time there were various theories about combustion. The most popular theory supposed that combustion is a kind of decomposition: When a substance is burned, it loses “phlogiston” (the essential fire material), which is meant to explain why burning substances give off heat and light. However, through some carefully designed experiments, Lavoisier successfully showed that when substances burn they gain weight, and the weight they gain is precisely equal to the weight lost by the surrounding air.

Some of his experiments were extremely clever, including one in which he used a burning glass (i.e., a large magnifying glass) to burn tin foil under a bell jar whose lower extremity was immersed in water, which served to confine the air under the jar (see diagram, right). This experiment served to show that the burning tin combined with a portion of the air contained under the jar. In a subsequent experiment he burned tin in a hermetically sealed glass vessel called a retort. This experiment enabled him to calculate precisely how much weight was gained by the burning tin, and showed that the weight gained could come only from the oxygen within the sealed vessel. After Lavoisier’s extensive experiments on combustion, the “phlogiston” theory lost its steam, and Lavoisier’s theory of combustion carried the day.

In another set of experiments, Lavoisier was able to show that water is a substance composed of oxygen and another more rarified gas that he called “hydrogen.” He succeeded in decomposing and synthesizing water in the laboratory and calculating the proportion by weight of hydrogen and oxygen. These experiments are significant because water was thought to be one of the elements — a simple substance — rather than a compound.

Indeed, whereas the ancients thought the number of elements is limited to only four, viz., earth, air, fire, and water, Lavoisier’s discoveries led him to conclude that there are many more elements — that there are dozens of distinct elementary metals and non-metals in the crust of the earth, that the air of our atmosphere is composed of several distinct gases, and that water is a compound rather than an element. Surprisingly, Lavoisier was of the opinion that fire is an element, although he was not of the opinion that it had negative weight (the view of those who espoused the phlogiston theory).

Reading Lavoisier in the Sophomore Natural Science course is a real delight because of the clarity of his thinking and expression, and because the detailed drawings and descriptions of his experiments are easy to follow. Readers can thus see and judge for themselves the arguments and experiments that help establish the atomic theory of matter. This material is obviously part of a liberal education because the liberally educated person is well-rounded, someone who can make educated judgments about all of the branches of learning, including natural science.

There is also a larger purpose to our study of thinkers such as Lavoisier. It is important for students to be able to think critically about the principles and presuppositions of modern natural science so that they can have an educated view of the conflict, or tension, between religion and science. Through the careful study of Lavoisier and other natural scientists, one can come to see that the widespread belief that faith and reason are contradictory is based not only on a distorted understanding of faith, but also on a superficial understanding of natural science.

© 2024 Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors. All rights reserved.

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Lavoisier’s experiment

The animation above describes one of the founding experiments of modern chemistry. We deliberately illustrated this experiment with period sets and instruments, as Lavoisier described them. It should be noted that it is mainly his wife Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze whose biography we invite you to discover, and who is the origin of many articles and illustrations (and probably much more) on behalf of her husband Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743-1794). Also of historical note here is how Berthe Bussard and Hélène Dubois describe this experiment in the manual "Leçons élémentaires de chimie" (Basic Chemistry Lessons) published by Belin in 1897:

“Lavoisier showed in 1774 that air is a mixture of oxygen and another gas, nitrogen. For twelve days and twelve consecutive nights he heated mercury in a retort flask whose curved neck ended at the top of a bell jar turned over a mercury tank. He sucked some of the air from the bell jar, using a curved tube, so that the mercury level was higher in the bell jar than in the tank. This arrangement made it easy to track changes in the level of mercury in the bell jar, and at the same time ensured the stability of the bell.

“On the second day, Lavoisier saw the surface of the mercury covered with reddish patches that increased for five days, and the level rose in the bell. He continued to heat until the twelfth day; no more changes occurred in the unit, so he let it cool down. The gas remaining in the flask and the bell jar extinguished a lit candle; this gas was not breathable: small animals immersed in this gas died there. He gave it the name in Greek azote (“a” without, “zoos” life). He put the red compound in a very small retort to leave as little air as possible. When it was heated, he collected oxygen from the mercury tank, and found mercury in the retort; the red compound was therefore a combination of mercury and oxygen, that is, mercury oxide. Lavoisier passed through the same bell the remaining nitrogen of the first experiment and the oxygen collected in the second; in so doing he obtained a mixture that had all the properties of atmospheric air. He had thus established by analysis and synthesis that the air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Since Lavoisier, other experiments have been carried out that have determined very accurately the composition of the air and proved that nitrogen accounts for four-fifths and oxygen for a fifth.

All these experiments are based on the same principle: remove oxygen from the air and leave nitrogen."

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Antoine Lavoisier: carbon cycle pioneer

Simon mitton.

Hello and welcome to my blog on “deep carbon science” –– a fascinating research field in the geosciences. My history of deep carbon science gives lively accounts of 150 scientists who contributed to the development of this new field over a period of four centuries. I write history by telling stories about interesting people. Here’s an extract from my account of the research of the great chemist Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–1794), which draws on the content and bibliographic references from two original articles by Galvez and Gaillardet (2012) and Galvez (2013). For complementary background and references, please refer to those earlier Deep Carbon Observatory works.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the quest to understand how living organisms interact with atmospheric gases dominated the research frontier of carbon science in France. Understanding the science that linked coal, life, and the carbon cycle, was central to Lavoisier’s work on what we know as Earth’s carbon cycle. In 1774 he noted that the respiration of animals (breathing) and combustion were processes that produced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That intriguing thought, connecting the phenomenon of life to the element carbon called for experiments!

During the 1780s Lavoisier conducted several precise experiments to gauge the heat produced by burning a piece of charcoal, and by a guinea pig in a bell-jar. His most famous of these took place in 1784. He used a human “guinea pig,” his young assistant Armand Séguin (1764–1835), who breathed oxygen through a facemask while Lavoisier measured increases in his breathing rate and pulse. From these trials, Lavoisier became convinced that respiration is slow-burn combustion, a chemical reaction that required an input of oxygen and produced an output of carbon dioxide, accompanied by the generation of heat energy.

Lavoisier reflected on this in the context of comfort of public the stuffy theatres in Paris which he frequented. At the Palais des Tuileries, following a theatrical performance, he found that oxygen in the upper part of the room was reduced while carbon dioxide increased. He concluded that all of the oxygen in the theatre would have been exhausted within four and a half hours in the absence of replacement air from outside. That reasoning led to an imaginative speculation: a guinea pig in a bell-jar perishes within an hour, humans would suffocate in a few hours in an airtight room … and yet, after untold millions of years, plants and animals have not yet exhausted the vitality of the atmosphere. What could this mean?

In 1792 he conjectured that plants probably possessed “the means nature uses to maintain the respirability of air” on a global scale . In his final paper on the properties of carbonate rocks and coal, penned the year before he was guillotined on 8 May 1794 after a show trial, Lavoisier applied quantitative reasoning to the global transfer of carbon by natural processes:

We can conceive what immense quantity of carbon is sequestered in the womb of the Earth, since marbles, limestones and calcareous earths contain about 3/10th and sometimes 1/3 of their weight in fixed air, and this latter is composed for 28/100th of its weight of carbon; then, it is easy to conclude that the calcareous rocks contain 8 to 9 pounds of carbon by quintal.

In a geochemical aside, he remarked that there could be no doubt that elemental carbon “is part in a number of combinations in the three kingdoms – minerals, plants and animals”, although he did not outline the changes in the form carbon must takes to pass from the mineral (coal) to the plant and animal kingdoms.

Read more … Simon Mitton, From Crust to Core (9781108426695), 106–110

References:

• Galvez, M. E. and Gaillardet, J. Historical constraints on the origins of the carbon cycle concept. Comptes Rendus Geoscience 344 , 549–567 (2012).
• Galvez, M. E. Early roots of the carbon cycle concept. Published online for the Deep Carbon Observatory, available at: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/496900 , DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000496900 (2013).

Next blog … Marie Tharp (1920–2006) pioneer cartographer of the ocean floor whose discoveries was “discounted as girl talk.”

View all blog posts from Simon Mitton here.

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About The Author

Simon Mitton is a Life Fellow at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. For more than fifty years he has passionately engaged in bringing discoveries in astronomy and cosmol...

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Teaching Chemistry for All Its Worth: The Interaction Between Facts, Ideas, and Language in Lavoisier’s and Priestley’s Chemistry Practice: The Case of the Study of the Composition of Air

• Published: 26 June 2014
• Volume 23 , pages 2045–2068, ( 2014 )

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Both Lavoisier and Priestley were committed to the role of experiment and observation in their chemistry practice. According to Lavoisier the physical sciences embody three important ingredients; facts, ideas, and language, and Priestley would not have disagreed with this. Ideas had to be consistent with the facts generated from experiment and observation and language needed to be precise and reflect the known chemistry of substances. While Priestley was comfortable with a moderate amount of hypothesis making, Lavoisier had no time for what he termed theoretical speculation about the fundamental nature of matter and avoided the use of the atomic hypothesis and Aristotle’s elements in his Elements of Chemistry . In the preface to this famous work he claims he has good educational reasons for this position. While Priestley and Lavoisier used similar kinds of apparatus in their chemistry practice, they came to their task with completely different worldviews as regards the nature of chemical reactivity. This paper examines these worldviews as practiced in the famous experiment on the composition of air and the implications of this for chemistry education are considered.

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Chemistry: progress since 1860—reflections on chemistry and chemistry education triggered by reading Muspratt’s Chemistry

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Mercury is the only metal which imbibes air and releases air within the temperature range of the Bunsen burner.

In modern terms the reaction is represented as: Fe(s) + H 2 O(g) → FeO(s) + H 2 (g).

Pb 3 O 4 in modern terms.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank one of the reviewers of the manuscript for directing his attention to the work of J. Bradley in the School Science Review.

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de Berg, K. Teaching Chemistry for All Its Worth: The Interaction Between Facts, Ideas, and Language in Lavoisier’s and Priestley’s Chemistry Practice: The Case of the Study of the Composition of Air. Sci & Educ 23 , 2045–2068 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-014-9712-z

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-014-9712-z

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Antoine Lavoisier

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What are Antoine Lavoisier’s accomplishments?

Antoine Lavoisier determined that oxygen was a key substance in combustion , and he gave the element its name. He developed the modern system of naming chemical substances and has been called the “father of modern chemistry ” for his emphasis on careful experimentation.

How was Antoine Lavoisier educated?

After studying the humanities and sciences at the Collège Mazarin, Antoine Lavoisier studied law. However, he devoted much of his time to lectures on physics and chemistry and to working with leading scientists.

Where was Antoine Lavoisier born and raised?

Antoine Lavoisier was born and raised in Paris. He was the first child and only son of a wealthy family.

How did Antoine Lavoisier die?

Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror on May 8, 1794. Under the monarchy, Lavoisier had a share in the General Farm, an enterprise that collected taxes for the government. He was executed with his father-in-law and 26 other General Farm members.

Who was Marie-Anne Lavoisier?

Marie-Anne Paulze married Antoine Lavoisier in 1771. She assisted Antoine in his experiments. She did the drawings for many of his works and translated works from English for him since he did not know that language.

Antoine Lavoisier (born August 26, 1743, Paris, France—died May 8, 1794, Paris) was a prominent French chemist and leading figure in the 18th-century chemical revolution who developed an experimentally based theory of the chemical reactivity of oxygen and coauthored the modern system for naming chemical substances. Having also served as a leading financier and public administrator before the French Revolution , he was executed with other financiers during the Terror .

Lavoisier was the first child and only son of a wealthy bourgeois family living in Paris . As a youth he exhibited an unusual studiousness and concern for the public good. After being introduced to the humanities and sciences at the prestigious Collège Mazarin, he studied law. Since the Paris law faculty made few demands on its students, Lavoisier was able to spend much of his three years as a law student attending public and private lectures on chemistry and physics and working under the tutelage of leading naturalists. Upon completing his legal studies, Lavoisier, like his father and his maternal grandfather before him, was admitted to the elite Order of Barristers, whose members presented cases before the High Court ( Parlement ) of Paris. But rather than practice law, Lavoisier began pursuing scientific research that in 1768 gained him admission into France’s foremost natural philosophy society, the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

The chemistry Lavoisier studied as a student was not a subject particularly noted for conceptual clarity or theoretical rigour. Although chemical writings contained considerable information about the substances chemists studied, little agreement existed upon the precise composition of chemical elements or between explanations of changes in composition. Many natural philosophers still viewed the four elements of Greek natural philosophy—earth, air, fire, and water—as the primary substances of all matter. Chemists like Lavoisier focused their attention upon analyzing “mixts” (i.e., compounds ), such as the salts formed when acids combine with alkalis . They hoped that by first identifying the properties of simple substances they would then be able to construct theories to explain the properties of compounds .

It was previously claimed that the elements were distinguishable by certain physical properties: water and earth were incompressible, air could be both expanded and compressed, whereas fire could not be either contained or measured. In the 1720s the English cleric and natural philosopher Stephen Hales demonstrated that atmospheric air loses its “spring” (i.e., elasticity) once it becomes “fixed” in solids and liquids. Perhaps, Hales suggested, air was really just a vapour like steam, and its spring, rather than being an essential property of the element, was created by heat . Hales’s experiments were an important first step in the experimental study of specific airs or gases , a subject that came to be called pneumatic chemistry.

In the 1750s the Scottish chemist Joseph Black demonstrated experimentally that the air fixed in certain reactions is chemically different from common air. Black wanted to know why slaked quicklime (hydrated calcium oxide) was neutralized when exposed to the atmosphere. He found that it absorbed only one component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide , which he called “fixed air.” Black’s work marked the beginning of investigative efforts devoted to identifying chemically distinct airs, an area of research that grew rapidly during the latter half of the century. Thus, pneumatic chemistry was a lively subject at the time Lavoisier became interested in a particular set of problems that involved air: the linked phenomena of combustion , respiration , and what 18th-century chemists called calcination (the change of metals to a powder [calx], such as that obtained by the rusting of iron ).

The assertion that mass is conserved in chemical reactions was an assumption of Enlightenment investigators rather than a discovery revealed by their experiments. Lavoisier believed that matter was neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions , and in his experiments he sought to demonstrate that this belief was not violated. Still he had difficulty proving that his view was universally valid. His insistence that chemists accepted this assumption as a law was part of his larger program for raising chemistry to the investigative standards and causal explanation found in contemporary experimental physics. While other chemists were also looking for conservation principles capable of explaining chemical reactions, Lavoisier was particularly intent on collecting and weighing all the substances involved in the reactions he studied. His success in the many elaborate experiments he conducted was in large part due to his independent wealth, which enabled him to have expensive apparatus built to his design, and to his ability to recruit and direct talented research associates. The fact that French chemistry students are still taught the conservation of mass as “Lavoisier’s law” is indicative of his success in making this principle a foundation of modern chemistry.

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Lavoisier's mercury experiment on air. Early engraving showing the apparatus used by Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) to demonstrate the formation of metal oxides. Mercury was placed in the retort at left, the end of which led to an air chamber in a bell jar over mercury (right). The retort was gently heated over 12 days. A reddish compound formed on the mercury in the retort, and the volume of air in the bell jar decreased. The remaining gas extinguished a flame. This showed that oxygen had been removed from the air. The red compound, on heating, released mercury and generated a gas which supported combustion and would support life (oxygen).

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Explain Lavoisier's experiment which provided evidence to the discovery of components in air.

Apparatus : The apparatus was set up as shown, with the mercury in the curved necked retort and air in the bell jar.

Procedure : The mercury in the retort was then heated for several days.

Observation :

• A red layer was formed on the heated mercury surface in the retort.
• The level of mercury in the trough rose by 1 5 \dfrac{1}{5} 5 1 ​ .

Conclusions :

• The oxygen in the retort combined with the mercury forming mercury [II] oxide [red layer] and the level in the trough rose by 1 5 \dfrac{1}{5} 5 1 ​ th of the original volume, thereby occupying the space of the used oxygen in the bell jar.
• The active part of the air removed by mercury on heating was named 'oxygen'.
• The remaining inactive part of the air in the bell jar was then named 'nitrogen'.

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Tabulate the various components of air, including the components with variable composition., state the meaning of the terms — (a) air (b) atmosphere, name the important scientists and their studies which led to the discovery of the components of air., compare the main components of air i.e., nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide with reference to their density and solubility, nature and reactivity..

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A paradigm of fragile Earth in Priestley's bell jar

Daniel martin.

1 UCL Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, Portex Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1EH, UK

2 Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, University College London, 9th Floor, Royal Free Hospital, London, NW3 2QG, UK

Andrew Thompson

3 BBC Television, Zone 2.20, BBC Pacific Quay, Glasgow, G51 1DA, UK

Iain Stewart

4 School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Plymouth University, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

Edward Gilbert

Katrina hope.

5 Centre of Human & Aerospace Physiological Sciences, School of Biomedical Sciences, King's College London, London, SE1 1UL, UK

Grace Kawai

Alistair griffiths.

6 The Eden Project, Bodelva, Cornwall, PL24 2SG, UK

Photosynthesis maintains aerobic life on Earth, and Joseph Priestly first demonstrated this in his eighteenth-century bell jar experiments using mice and mint plants. In order to demonstrate the fragility of life on Earth, Priestley's experiment was recreated using a human subject placed within a modern-day bell jar.

A single male subject was placed within a sealed, oxygen-depleted enclosure (12.4% oxygen), which contained 274 C 3 and C 4 plants for a total of 48 h. A combination of natural and artificial light was used to ensure continuous photosynthesis during the experiment. Atmospheric gas composition within the enclosure was recorded throughout the study, and physiological responses in the subject were monitored.

After 48 h, the oxygen concentration within the container had risen to 18.1%, and hypoxaemia in the subject was alleviated (arterial oxygen saturation rose from 86% at commencement of the experiment to 99% at its end). The concentration of carbon dioxide rose to a maximum of 0.66% during the experiment.

Conclusions

This simple but unique experiment highlights the importance of plant life within the Earth's ecosystem by demonstrating our dependence upon it to restore and sustain an oxygen concentration that supports aerobic metabolism. Without the presence of plants within the sealed enclosure, the concentration of oxygen would have fallen, and carbon dioxide concentration would have risen to a point at which human life could no longer be supported.

The Earth supports a fragile ecosystem, and its inhabitants depend for their survival upon complex interactions between them, which have developed over billions of years. Imbalance of one component in this bionetwork can have far-reaching effects on organisms whose existence relies upon the presence of other species. Despite the ability to alter their environment in diverse ways, humans are reliant for their survival upon an element derived primarily from plants and produced by chlorophyll during photosynthesis, oxygen (O 2 ).

Photosynthesis is arguably the single most important chemical process on our planet, and the first colour images captured of Earth from space revealed the vast green hues of the landmasses supporting plant life, confirming its dominance within our ecosystem. Using energy from sunlight, chlorophyll strips electrons from water molecules, which then convert atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into carbon compounds, producing O 2 as a byproduct. Whilst mechanisms that use alternative naturally available compounds to release energy exist, the abundance of water on the surface of the Earth meant that photosynthesis rapidly became the foremost bio-energetic pathway on the planet. During the early era of chlorophyll photosynthesis, approximately 2,400 million years ago [ 1 ], the atmosphere was rich in CO 2 , whilst O 2 was scarce. As time progressed and photosynthetic species slowly overwhelmed the surface of the Earth, the concentration of O 2 rose and eventually reached levels we are accustomed to today.

In the early 1770 s, Joseph Priestley conducted a series of experiments that led to the discovery of the intimate relationship between plant and animal life [ 2 ]. In his principal experiment, Priestley placed a mouse within a sealed jar and observed it to eventually perish. When repeated with sprigs of mint within the jar, neither did the animal die ‘nor was it at all inconvenient to a mouse’ [ 2 ]. He had made the breakthrough that plants produce a substance which is life-giving to animals and then went on to describe ‘dephlogisticated air’, which, thanks to the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, soon became known as ‘oxygen’. The story of photosynthesis was completed in 1779 when a Dutchman, Jan Ingenhousz, demonstrated that the process by which plants produce O 2 is dependent upon light.

We hypothesised that a human could survive within a sealed modern-day bell jar, even if the O 2 concentration within was significantly reduced from the outset, provided that it contained sufficient plant matter to generate O 2 and remove CO 2 via photosynthesis.

Formal ethical approval was not sought for this experiment as it was designed for the purpose of a television demonstration; consent was implied through the subject's involvement in the project and participation in the event. The Chair of the University College London Committee on the Ethics of Non-NHS Human Research approved this strategy. Prior to commencing the experiment, a full medical screening questionnaire was completed by the subject, and he was assessed by a physician with experience in high altitude and acute hypoxia research (DM). The protocol was explained to the subject in full, along with a description of the potential risks and safety measures in place. A standard resuscitation kit was available throughout the experiment, along with bottled supplemental oxygen. A physician trained in Advanced Life Support was also present outside the container throughout the experiment, with the ability to enter the container at any point should there be concerns regarding the welfare of the subject.

We constructed the first human recreation of Priestley's ‘mouse in a bell jar’ experiment to demonstrate the ability of plants to generate sufficient O 2 to sustain human life in an enclosed environment [ 3 ]. A healthy 47-year-old male was placed within a transparent airtight container measuring 2.0 × 2.5 × 6.0 m (30 m 3 , Figure ​ Figure1), 1 ), itself placed within the rainforest biome at the Eden Project, Cornwall, UK. A selection of plants known for their high photosynthetic yield (under certain environmental conditions) was placed within the container. Prior to the experiment, containerised plants were grown in a peat-free Eden Project Melcourt mix within a standard glasshouse at a relative humidity of 70% to 80% and temperature range of 15°C to 30°C. During this growing phase, the plants were watered with liquid nutrient feed at 20 ml/L (N 177 ppm, P 35 ppm, K 119 ppm, Ca 49 ppm, Mg 17 ppm, B 0.2 ppm, Cu 0.08 ppm, Fe 1.44 ppm, Mn 0.48 ppm, Mo 0.04 ppm and Zn 0.64 ppm). In total, 274 plants consisting of 18 different taxa were placed within the container, with 10,967 leaves (excluding Tillandsia usneoides ) and a total leaf area of 1,106,033 cm 2 (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). A mixture of C 3 (ribulose diphosphate carboxylase utilising) and C 4 (phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase utilising) plants were selected in order to maximise photosynthetic potential within the container. Several C 4 carbon fixation plants were grown, including Miscanthus x giganteus and Zea mays (maize), because they have advantages over C 3 plants, resulting in superior carbon-gaining capacities and photosynthetic efficiency [ 4 ]. During the experiment, the subject regularly irrigated the plants when deemed necessary from a water source within the container.

The sealed container with plants, the subject and external artificial lighting.

Taxa, number of leaves and leaf area of the plants placed within the container

Individual leaf areas were determined by tracing a leaf onto graph paper; the area of the petiole was not included within the calculations. From each individual plant, a subsample representing three small, three medium and three large leaves were harvested, and the mean of each of the three leaves was taken and used to provide a representative small, medium and large leaf area. The number of small, medium and large leaves in each individual plant was then counted, and the corresponding areas were used to estimate the total leaf surface area. a Total leaf area was calculated as both the upper and lower sides of the leaves. T. usneoides , a moss, was also placed within the container, but it was not possible to calculate leaf area.

In order to more clearly demonstrate oxygen production and highlight the effectiveness of photosynthesis in preserving human life, the environment within the container was rendered hypoxic at the start of the experiment. Three hypoxic generators (Hypoxico Everest Summit II, Hypoxico Inc, New York, NY, USA) were used to reduce the concentration of O 2 in the container. These devices consist of a molecular sieve system that uses zeolite to separate nitrogen from O 2 in the air and consequently provides a nitrogen-rich gas mixture to purge the atmosphere within the container. Connected to the container, and in conjunction with a one-way pressure relief valve, the hypoxic generators reduced the concentration of O 2 to 12.4% prior to commencing the experiment. Once the subject was sealed inside the container and safety procedures had been confirmed, the hypoxic generators were switched off and the one-way valves were closed. Artificial lighting (8 × 2,000 W systems; ARRI, Munich, Germany) was placed around the container externally and switched on at the beginning of the experiment. A split air-conditioning unit (Clima 16 HP Portable Air Conditioner, Toshiba, Tokyo, Japan) was used to maintain temperatures for optimal plant growth and comfort for the subject whilst ensuring a sealed atmosphere. The concentrations of O 2 and CO 2 within the container were monitored with a gas analyser (Aspida, Analox, London, UK) and plotted every hour along with temperature and humidity from a digital hygro-thermometer (Brannan, Cumbria, UK). The subject's heart rate and arterial O 2 saturation (SpO 2 ) were monitored continuously (Johnson and Johnson Dinamap MPS Monitor and Onyx 9500, Nonin, Plymouth, MN, USA); respiratory rate was recorded hourly by manual calculation.

The concentration of O 2 in the container rose throughout the experiment, peaking at 18.1% in the final hour (hour 48; Figure ​ Figure2). 2 ). The CO 2 concentration fluctuated depending on the subject's activity within the container (declining noticeably during sleep), but there was an overall rise that peaked at 0.66%, approximately halfway through the experiment (Figure ​ (Figure3). 3 ). There was a diurnal variation in temperature (25.3°C to 28.4°C), and humidity varied between 57% and 87%. On entering the hypoxic container, the subject had a heart rate of 90 beats per minute, respiratory rate of 20 breaths per minute and SpO 2 of 86%. These figures returned to the subject's resting normal values as the concentration of O 2 rose within the container. The subject's final SpO 2 was 99% (Figure ​ (Figure4 4 ).

Change in oxygen concentration within the container over time.

Change in carbon dioxide concentration within the container over time. The shaded areas are those during which the subject was sleeping.

Changes in the subject's oxygen saturation and heart rate during enclosure within the container.

The design of the biological ecosystem in this study was such that human life was sustained for 48 h and the initial hypoxic environment restored to one of near-normal O 2 concentration. In the early 1990's, the ‘Biosphere 2’ experiment was conducted to explore the feasibility of self-sustaining biospheres in space. This grand design consisted of a 200 m 3 atmosphere within a dome that contained eight volunteers, which was designed to sustain them for 2 years [ 5 ]. However, the O 2 concentration within the biosphere dropped from 20.9% to 14.2% after 16 months, so additional O 2 had to be added to the atmosphere [ 6 ]. This decline was traced to a two-step process: firstly, there was O 2 loss to organic soil matter producing CO 2 , and secondly, the CO 2 was being captured by structural concrete to form calcium carbonate [ 5 ]. In the current experiment, the initial O 2 concentration of 12.4% (equivalent to approximately 4,500 m above sea level) resulted in a marked reduction in the subject's SpO 2 and represents an acute hypoxic exposure that is frequently associated with symptoms of altitude-related illness [ 7 ]. During the last few hours of the study, there was a small reduction in rate of the O 2 concentration rise, perhaps due to deterioration in the condition of the plants, noticeable towards the end of the experiment. Direct heating and excessive light exposure, arguably both present in this experiment, can lead to the denaturing of enzymes within chlorophyll [ 8 ]. There were fluctuations in CO 2 concentration throughout the study, with a tendency for it to rise as time progressed (Figure ​ (Figure3 3 ).

As well as providing an insight into the use of plants to maintain a self-sufficient biosphere, such as would be required on the surface of extra-terrestrial bodies without an atmosphere, our experiment highlights the detrimental effects of a markedly increased CO 2 concentration. CO 2 concentrations have altered dramatically over the course of the Earth's history [ 9 ], and there is much concern that levels are now rising at an alarming rate [ 10 ]. Under certain environmental conditions, increasing the ambient concentration of CO 2 can be beneficial, increasing photosynthetic activity, plant growth and yield [ 11 , 12 ]. Using CO 2 enrichment to increase plant growth and yield is now commonplace in commercial glasshouse crop production, with optimal levels being between 700 and 1,000 ppm [ 13 ]. However, in some species, super-elevated CO 2 concentrations (over 2,000 ppm) induces foliar symptoms of chlorosis and necrosis [ 14 , 15 ], and levels above 10,000 ppm are known to cause damage to young maize plants after 48 h in the form of ‘yellow streaks’ [ 16 ]. During this experiment, the CO 2 levels remained above 2,000 ppm and reached a maximum of 6,600 ppm, yet yellow streaks were observed on the maize plants by the end. It is possible that damage to the maize may have also reduced the photosynthetic yield and the production of O 2 towards the end of this experiment. This study, therefore, provides an insight into the use of plants to maintain a self-sufficient biosphere, such as would be required on the surface of extra-terrestrial bodies without an atmosphere, and the potentially detrimental effects of a dramatically increased CO 2 concentration.

This simple experiment is a humble reminder of the integral relationship between animal and plant life on Earth, in which the former owe their existence to the latter. Without the presence of plants within the sealed environment, the concentration of O 2 would have fallen and CO 2 concentration would have risen to a point at which human life could no longer be supported. Whilst O 2 sustains human life and plants maintain its level within the atmosphere with remarkable efficiency, the fundamental role of photosynthesis is arguably taken for granted. Deprived of plants, the subject within the container would have succumbed to the effects of severe hypoxaemia. The experiment reminds us of our total dependency upon plants, and the ecosystem in which they exist.

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

AT conceived the idea, and the experiment was designed by AT, AG and DM. The experiment was conducted by DM, KH, EG, GK, AT and IS. Data were analysed by DM, and the manuscript was written by DM, AG and EG. All authors discussed the results and implications and commented on the manuscript at all stages. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Explain lavoisier bell jar experiment​

Explanation:

Lavoisier filled the bell jar with oxygen, placed a weighed quantity of calcined charcoal in the dish, marked the level of the mercury on the side of the bell jar, ignited the charcoal, and after the apparatus had cooled, marked the level to which the mercury had risen.

In the experiment, Lavoisier filled the bell jar with oxygen, placed a weighed quantity of calcined charcoal in the dish, marked the level of the mercury on the side of the bell jar, ignited the charcoal, and after the apparatus had cooled, marked the level to which the mercury had risen.

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