Reviewing for the mid-term: a recap

Chances are, you’re not like me: you cringe when someone says the word “chemistry.” Your memory of it vaguely harkens back to an undergrad class whose knowledge you flushed once you finished the final. That’s okay — my goal for this series is to change that paradigm, make it understandable to all, and provide some entertainment.

We’ve covered quite a bit of chemistry history (an we haven’t even gotten to the periodic table, subatomic particles — a whole bunch of stuff!), so I figured it would be a good time to conduct a quick review of where we’ve been.

Chemistry of Antiquity

While elements like carbon, tin, gold, and silver have been known for quite some time, their composition wasn’t really important to anyone. Ancient monarchs would sponsor rudimentary metallurgical studies to prevent counterfeiting of currency (since it was mostly silver and gold based), but little other experimentation occurred. Aristotle is generally considered the first to think upon the composition of substances and came up with the four classical elements, which then dominated scientific thinking for the next 2000 years.

For about 2000 years, Chemistry was so meta | Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Alchemists Weren’t All That Bad

During that time, alchemy soared in popularity — so much so that monarchs even sought out their services. It is true…