Antoine Lavoisier 1785
Law of Conservation of Mass:
At the time of discovery, Antoine Lavoisier was working on project dealing with combustion. Hearing that Galileo stressed the importance of measurements in astrology, Lavoisier thought he should apply that same concept to chemistry. Since he was dealing with combustion, he would weigh different substances first and after it burned, he would weigh the result/remains.
He started noticing that the second weight was always lighter than the first weight, unless it was tin, sulfur, phosphorous. He found that they gained in weight because of the rust. He was confused by this, for it seemed to him that matter was simply disappearing/appearing. Antoine knew that gases escaped when burning substances, so he wanted to capture the gases and take the weight of them. Antoine then built an apparatus with sealed containers. He would then weigh, for example, wood it in the container and burn it. After it was done burning and there was only ash left, he took the weight of the container again. He found that the combination of ash and gas had the same weight of just the wood. |