Gasoline
Gasoline, gas or petrol is a colorless petroleum-derived flammable liquid, used as a fuel in spark-ignited internal combustion engines. It consists of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. On average, a 42-U. S.-gallon barrel of crude oil yields about 19 U. S. gallons of gasoline after processing in an oil refinery, though this varies based on the crude oil assay. The characteristic of a particular gasoline blend to resist igniting too early is measured by its octane rating. Gasoline is produced in several grades of octane rating. Tetraethyl lead and other lead compounds are no longer used in most areas to increase octane rating. Other chemicals are added to gasoline to improve chemical stability and performance characteristics, control corrosiveness and provide fuel system cleaning. Gasoline may contain oxygen-containing chemicals such as ethanol, MTBE or ETBE to improve combustion. Gasoline used in internal combustion engines can have significant effects on the local environment, is a contributor to global human carbon dioxide emissions.
Gasoline can enter the environment uncombusted, both as liquid and as vapor, from leakage and handling during production and delivery. As an example of efforts to control such leakage, many underground storage tanks are required to have extensive measures in place to detect and prevent such leaks. Gasoline contains other known carcinogens. "Gasoline" is a North American word. The Oxford English Dictionary dates its first recorded use to 1863 when it was spelled "gasolene"; the term "gasoline" was first used in North America in 1864. The word is a derivation from the word "gas" and the chemical suffixes "-ol" and "-ine" or "-ene". However, the term may have been influenced by the trademark "Cazeline" or "Gazeline". On 27 November 1862, the British publisher, coffee merchant and social campaigner John Cassell placed an advertisement in The Times of London: The Patent Cazeline Oil, safe and brilliant … possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.
This is the earliest occurrence of the word to have been found. Cassell discovered that a shopkeeper in Dublin named Samuel Boyd was selling counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd did not reply and changed every ‘C’ into a ‘G’, thus coining the word "gazeline"; the name "petrol" is used in place of "gasoline" in most Commonwealth countries. "Petrol" was first used as the name of a refined petroleum product around 1870 by British wholesaler Carless, Capel & Leonard, who marketed it as a solvent. When the product found a new use as a motor fuel, Frederick Simms, an associate of Gottlieb Daimler, suggested to Carless that they register the trademark "petrol", but by this time the word was in general use inspired by the French pétrole, the registration was not allowed. Carless registered a number of alternative names for the product, but "petrol" nonetheless became the common term for the fuel in the British Commonwealth. British refiners used "motor spirit" as a generic name for the automotive fuel and "aviation spirit" for aviation gasoline.
When Carless was denied a trademark on "petrol" in the 1930s, its competitors switched to the more popular name "petrol". However, "motor spirit" had made its way into laws and regulations, so the term remains in use as a formal name for petrol; the term is used most in Nigeria, where the largest petroleum companies call their product "premium motor spirit". Although "petrol" has made inroads into Nigerian English, "premium motor spirit" remains the formal name, used in scientific publications, government reports, newspapers; the use of the word gasoline instead of petrol outside North America can be confusing. Shortening gasoline to gas, which happens causes confusion with various forms of gaseous products used as automotive fuel like compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas ). In many languages, the name is derived from benzene, such as Benzin in benzina in Italian. Argentina and Paraguay use the colloquial name nafta derived from that of the chemical naphtha.
The first internal combustion engines suitable for use in transportation applications, so-called Otto engines, were developed in Germany during the last quarter of the 19th century. The fuel for these early engines was a volatile hydrocarbon obtained from coal gas. With a boiling point near 85 °C, it was well-suited for early carburetors; the development of a "spray nozzle" carburetor enabled the use of less volatile fuels. Further improvements in engine efficiency were attempted at higher compression ratios, but early attempts were blocked by the premature explosion of fuel, known as knocking. In 1891, the Shukhov cracking process became the world's first commercial method to break down heavier hydrocarbons in crude oil to increase the percentage of lighter products compared to simple distillation; the evolution of gasoline followed the evolution of oil as the dominant source of energy in the industrializing world. Prior to World War One, Britain was the world's greatest industrial power and depended on its navy to protect the shipping of raw materials from its colonies.
Germany was industrializing and, like Britain, lacked many natural resources which had to be shipped to the home country. By the 1890s, Germany
Clay
Clay is a finely-grained natural rock or soil material that combines one or more clay minerals with possible traces of quartz, metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure. Clays are plastic due to particle size and geometry as well as water content, become hard and non–plastic upon drying or firing. Depending on the soil's content in which it is found, clay can appear in various colours from white to dull grey or brown to deep orange-red. Although many occurring deposits include both silts and clay, clays are distinguished from other fine-grained soils by differences in size and mineralogy. Silts, which are fine-grained soils that do not include clay minerals, tend to have larger particle sizes than clays. There is, some overlap in particle size and other physical properties; the distinction between silt and clay varies by discipline. Geologists and soil scientists consider the separation to occur at a particle size of 2 µm, sedimentologists use 4–5 μm, colloid chemists use 1 μm.
Geotechnical engineers distinguish between silts and clays based on the plasticity properties of the soil, as measured by the soils' Atterberg limits. ISO 14688 grades clay particles as being smaller than 2 silt particles as being larger. Mixtures of sand and less than 40% clay are called loam. Loam is used as a building material. Clay minerals form over long periods of time as a result of the gradual chemical weathering of rocks silicate-bearing, by low concentrations of carbonic acid and other diluted solvents; these solvents acidic, migrate through the weathering rock after leaching through upper weathered layers. In addition to the weathering process, some clay minerals are formed through hydrothermal activity. There are two types of clay deposits: secondary. Primary clays remain at the site of formation. Secondary clays are clays that have been transported from their original location by water erosion and deposited in a new sedimentary deposit. Clay deposits are associated with low energy depositional environments such as large lakes and marine basins.
Depending on the academic source, there are three or four main groups of clays: kaolinite, montmorillonite-smectite and chlorite. Chlorites are not always considered to be a clay, sometimes being classified as a separate group within the phyllosilicates. There are 30 different types of "pure" clays in these categories, but most "natural" clay deposits are mixtures of these different types, along with other weathered minerals. Varve is clay with visible annual layers, which are formed by seasonal deposition of those layers and are marked by differences in erosion and organic content; this type of deposit is common in former glacial lakes. When fine sediments are delivered into the calm waters of these glacial lake basins away from the shoreline, they settle to the lake bed; the resulting seasonal layering is preserved in an distribution of clay sediment banding. Quick clay is a unique type of marine clay indigenous to the glaciated terrains of Norway, Northern Ireland, Sweden, it is a sensitive clay, prone to liquefaction, involved in several deadly landslides.
Powder X-ray diffraction can be used to identify clays. The physical and reactive chemical properties can be used to help elucidate the composition of clays. Clays exhibit plasticity. However, when dry, clay becomes firm and when fired in a kiln, permanent physical and chemical changes occur; these changes convert the clay into a ceramic material. Because of these properties, clay is used for making pottery, both utilitarian and decorative, construction products, such as bricks and floor tiles. Different types of clay, when used with different minerals and firing conditions, are used to produce earthenware and porcelain. Prehistoric humans discovered the useful properties of clay; some of the earliest pottery shards recovered are from Japan. They are associated with the Jōmon culture and deposits they were recovered from have been dated to around 14,000 BC. Clay tablets were the first known writing medium. Scribes wrote by inscribing them with cuneiform script using a blunt reed called a stylus. Purpose-made clay balls were used as sling ammunition.
Clays sintered in fire were the first form of ceramic. Bricks, cooking pots, art objects, smoking pipes, musical instruments such as the ocarina can all be shaped from clay before being fired. Clay is used in many industrial processes, such as paper making, cement production, chemical filtering; until the late 20th century, bentonite clay was used as a mold binder in the manufacture of sand castings. Clay, being impermeable to water, is used where natural seals are needed, such as in the cores of dams, or as a barrier in landfills against toxic seepage. Studies in the early 21st century have investigated clay's absorption capacities in various applications, such as the removal of heavy metals from waste water and air purification. Traditional uses of clay as medicine goes back to prehistoric times. An example is Armenian bole, used to soothe an upset stomach; some animals such as parrots and pigs ingest clay for similar reasons. Kaolin clay and attapulgite have been used as anti-diarrheal medicines.
Clay as the defining ingredient of loam is one of the oldest building materials on Earth, among other
Archimedes' principle
Archimedes' principle states that the upward buoyant force, exerted on a body immersed in a fluid, whether or submerged, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces and acts in the upward direction at the center of mass of the displaced fluid. Archimedes' principle is a law of physics fundamental to fluid mechanics, it was formulated by Archimedes of Syracuse. In On Floating Bodies, Archimedes suggested that: Any object or immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object. Archimedes' principle allows the buoyancy of an object or immersed in a fluid to be calculated; the downward force on the object is its weight. The upward, or buoyant, force on the object is. Thus, the net force on the object is the difference between the magnitudes of the buoyant force and its weight. If this net force is positive, the object rises. In simple words, Archimedes' principle states that, when a body is or immersed in a fluid, it experiences an apparent loss in weight, equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the immersed part of the body.
Consider a cuboid immersed in a fluid, with one of its sides orthogonal to the direction of gravity. The fluid will exert a normal force on each face, but only the normal forces on top and bottom will contribute to buoyancy; the pressure difference between the bottom and the top face is directly proportional to the height. Multiplying the pressure difference by the area of a face gives a net force on the cuboid – the buoyancy, equaling in size the weight of the fluid displaced by the cuboid. By summing up sufficiently many arbitrarily small cuboids this reasoning may be extended to irregular shapes, so, whatever the shape of the submerged body, the buoyant force is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. Weight of displaced fluid = weight of object in vacuum − weight of object in fluid The weight of the displaced fluid is directly proportional to the volume of the displaced fluid; the weight of the object in the fluid is reduced, because of the force acting on it, called upthrust. In simple terms, the principle states that the buoyant force on an object is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object, or the density of the fluid multiplied by the submerged volume times the gravity or Fb = ρ x g x V. Thus, among submerged objects with equal masses, objects with greater volume have greater buoyancy.
Suppose a rock's weight is measured as 10 newtons when suspended by a string in a vacuum with gravity acting on it. Suppose that, when the rock is lowered into water, it displaces water of weight 3 newtons; the force it exerts on the string from which it hangs would be 10 newtons minus the 3 newtons of buoyant force: 10 − 3 = 7 newtons. Buoyancy reduces the apparent weight of objects that have sunk to the sea floor, it is easier to lift an object up through the water than it is to pull it out of the water. For a submerged object, Archimedes' principle can be reformulated as follows: apparent immersed weight = weight of object − weight of displaced fluid inserted into the quotient of weights, expanded by the mutual volume density of object density of fluid = weight weight of displaced fluid yields the formula below; the density of the immersed object relative to the density of the fluid can be calculated without measuring any volume is density of object density of fluid = weight weight − apparent immersed weight.
Example: If you drop wood into water, buoyancy will keep it afloat. Example: A helium balloon in a moving car; when increasing speed or driving in a curve, the air moves in the opposite direction to the car's acceleration. However, due to buoyancy, the balloon is pushed "out of the way" by the air, will drift in the same direction as the car's acceleration; when an object is immersed in a liquid, the liquid exerts an upward force, known as the buoyant force, proportional to the weight of the displaced liquid. The sum force acting on the object is equal to the difference between the weight of the object and the weight of displaced liquid. Equilibrium, or neutral buoyancy, is achieved. Archimedes' principle does not consider the surface tension acting on the body. Moreover, Archimedes' principle has been found to break down in complex fluids. There is an exception to Archimedes' principle known as the bottom
Jacques Charles
Jacques Alexandre César Charles was a French inventor, scientist and balloonist. Charles wrote nothing about mathematics, most of what has been credited to him was due to mistaking him with another Jacques Charles a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, entering on May 12, 1785, he was sometimes called Charles the Geometer. Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first unmanned hydrogen-filled gas balloon in August 1783, their pioneering use of hydrogen for lift led to this type of balloon being named a Charlière. Charles's law, describing how gases tend to expand when heated, was formulated by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802, but he credited it to unpublished work by Jacques Charles. Charles was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1795 and subsequently became professor of physics at the Académie de Sciences. Charles was born in Beaugency-sur-Loire in 1746, he married a creole woman 37 years younger than himself. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine fell in love with her, she was the inspiration for Elvire in his 1820 autobiographical Poetic Meditation "Le Lac", which describes in retrospect the fervent love shared by a couple from the point of view of the bereaved man.
Charles outlived her and died in Paris on April 7, 1823. Charles conceived the idea that hydrogen would be a suitable lifting agent for balloons having studied the work of Robert Boyle's Boyle's Law, published 100 years earlier in 1662, of his contemporaries Henry Cavendish, Joseph Black and Tiberius Cavallo, he designed the craft and worked in conjunction with the Robert brothers, Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis, to build it in their workshop at the Place des Victoires in Paris. The brothers invented the methodology for the lightweight, airtight gas bag by dissolving rubber in a solution of turpentine and varnished the sheets of silk that were stitched together to make the main envelope, they used alternate strips of red and white silk, but the discolouration of the varnishing/rubberising process left a red and yellow result. Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first hydrogen filled balloon on August 27, 1783, from the Champ de Mars, where Ben Franklin was among the crowd of onlookers.
The balloon was comparatively small, a 35 cubic metre sphere of rubberised silk, only capable of lifting about 9 kg. It was filled with hydrogen, made by pouring nearly a quarter of a tonne of sulphuric acid onto a half a tonne of scrap iron; the hydrogen gas was fed into the balloon via lead pipes. Daily progress bulletins were issued on the inflation; the balloon flew northwards for 45 minutes, pursued by chasers on horseback, landed 21 kilometers away in the village of Gonesse where the terrified local peasants destroyed it with pitchforks or knives. The project was funded by a subscription organised by Barthelemy Faujas de Saint-Fond. At 13:45 on December 1, 1783 Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launched a new manned balloon from the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. Jacques Charles was accompanied by Nicolas-Louis Robert as co-pilot of the 380-cubic-metre, hydrogen-filled balloon; the envelope was fitted with a hydrogen release valve and was covered with a net from which the basket was suspended.
Sand ballast was used to control altitude. They ascended to a height of about 1,800 feet and landed at sunset in Nesles-la-Vallée after a 2-hour 5 minute flight covering 36 km; the chasers on horseback, who were led by the Duc de Chartres, held down the craft while both Charles and Nicolas-Louis alighted. Jacques Charles decided to ascend again, but alone this time because the balloon had lost some of its hydrogen; this time it ascended to an altitude of about 3,000 metres, where he saw the sun again. He began suffering from aching pain in his ears so he "valved" to release gas, descended to land about 3 km away at Tour du Lay. Unlike the Robert brothers, Charles never flew again, although a hydrogen balloon came to be called a Charlière in his honour, it is reported that 400,000 spectators witnessed the launch, that hundreds had paid one crown each to help finance the construction and receive access to a "special enclosure" for a "close-up view" of the take-off. Among the "special enclosure" crowd was Benjamin Franklin, the diplomatic representative of the United States of America.
Present was Joseph Montgolfier, whom Charles honoured by asking him to release the small, bright green, pilot balloon to assess the wind and weather conditions. This event took place ten days after the world's first manned balloon flight by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier using a Montgolfier brothers hot air balloon. Simon Schama wrote in Citizens: Montgolfier's principal scientific collaborator was M. Charles..., the first to propose the gas produced by vitriol instead of the burning, dampened straw and wood that he had used in earlier flights. Charles himself was eager to ascend but had run into a firm veto from the King, who from the earliest reports had been observing the progress of the flights with keen attentiveness. Anxious ab
Thermometer
A thermometer is a device that measures temperature or a temperature gradient. A thermometer has two important elements: a temperature sensor in which some change occurs with a change in temperature. Thermometers are used in technology and industry to monitor processes, in meteorology, in medicine, in scientific research; some of the principles of the thermometer were known to Greek philosophers of two thousand years ago. The modern thermometer evolved from the thermoscope with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation through the 17th and 18th centuries. While an individual thermometer is able to measure degrees of hotness, the readings on two thermometers cannot be compared unless they conform to an agreed scale. Today there is an absolute thermodynamic temperature scale. Internationally agreed temperature scales are designed to approximate this based on fixed points and interpolating thermometers; the most recent official temperature scale is the International Temperature Scale of 1990.
It extends from 0.65 K to 1,358 K. Various authors have credited the invention of the thermometer to Hero of Alexandria; the thermometer was not a single invention, but a development. Hero of Alexandria knew of the principle that certain substances, notably air and contract and described a demonstration in which a closed tube filled with air had its end in a container of water; the expansion and contraction of the air caused the position of the water/air interface to move along the tube. Such a mechanism was used to show the hotness and coldness of the air with a tube in which the water level is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the gas; these devices were developed by several European scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries, notably Galileo Galilei. As a result, devices were shown to produce this effect reliably, the term thermoscope was adopted because it reflected the changes in sensible heat; the difference between a thermoscope and a thermometer is. Though Galileo is said to be the inventor of the thermometer, what he produced were thermoscopes.
The first clear diagram of a thermoscope was published in 1617 by Giuseppe Biancani: the first showing a scale and thus constituting a thermometer was by Robert Fludd in 1638. This was a vertical tube, closed by a bulb of air at the top, with the lower end opening into a vessel of water; the water level in the tube is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the air, so it is what we would now call an air thermometer. The first person to put a scale on a thermoscope is variously said to be Francesco Sagredo or Santorio Santorio in about 1611 to 1613; the word thermometer first appeared in 1624 in La Récréation Mathématique by J. Leurechon, who describes one with a scale of 8 degrees; the word comes from the Greek words θερμός, meaning "hot" and μέτρον, meaning "measure". The above instruments suffered from the disadvantage that they were barometers, i.e. sensitive to air pressure. In 1629, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, a student of Galileo, published what is the first description and illustration of a sealed liquid-in-glass thermometer.
It is described as having a bulb at the bottom of a sealed tube filled with brandy. The tube has a numbered scale. Delmedigo does not claim to have invented this instrument, nor does he name anyone else as its inventor. In about 1654 Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany produced such an instrument, the first modern-style thermometer, dependent on the expansion of a liquid, independent of air pressure. Many other scientists experimented with various designs of thermometer. However, each inventor and each thermometer was unique—there was no standard scale. In 1665 Christiaan Huygens suggested using the melting and boiling points of water as standards, in 1694 Carlo Renaldini proposed using them as fixed points on a universal scale. In 1701, Isaac Newton proposed a scale of 12 degrees between the melting point of ice and body temperature. In 1714 Dutch scientist and inventor Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first reliable thermometer, using mercury instead of alcohol and water mixtures.
In 1724 he proposed a temperature scale. He could do this because he manufactured thermometers, using mercury for the first time and the quality of his production could provide a finer scale and greater reproducibility, leading to its general adoption. In 1742, Anders Celsius proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water, though the scale which now bears his name has them the other way around. French entomologist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur invented an alcohol thermometer and temperature scale in 1730 that proved to be less reliable than Fahrenheit's mercury thermometer; the first physician that put thermometer measurements to clinical practice was Herman Boerhaave. In 1866, Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt invented a clinical thermometer that produced a body temperature reading in five minutes as opposed to twenty. In 1999, Dr. Francesco Pompei of the Exergen Corporation introduced the world's first temporal artery thermometer, a non-
Milk
Milk is a nutrient-rich, white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for infant mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to its young and can reduce the risk of many diseases, it contains many other nutrients including lactose. Interspecies consumption of milk is not uncommon among humans, many of whom consume the milk of other mammals; as an agricultural product, milk called dairy milk, is extracted from farm animals during or soon after pregnancy. Dairy farms produced about 730 million tonnes of milk from 260 million dairy cows. India is the world's largest producer of milk, is the leading exporter of skimmed milk powder, yet it exports few other milk products; the increasing rise in domestic demand for dairy products and a large demand-supply gap could lead to India being a net importer of dairy products in the future. The United States, India and Brazil are the world's largest exporters of milk and milk products.
China and Russia were the world's largest importers of milk and milk products until 2016 when both countries became self-sufficient, contributing to a worldwide glut of milk. Throughout the world, more than six billion people consume milk products. Over 750 million people live in dairy farming households; the term "milk" comes from "Old English meoluc, from Proto-Germanic *meluks "milk"". Milk consumption occurs in two distinct overall types: a natural source of nutrition for all infant mammals and a food product obtained from other mammals for consumption by humans of all ages. In all mammals, milk is fed to infants through breastfeeding, either directly or by expressing the milk to be stored and consumed later; the early milk from mammals is called colostrum. Colostrum contains antibodies that provide protection to the newborn baby as well as nutrients and growth factors; the makeup of the colostrum and the period of secretion varies from species to species. For humans, the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six months and breastfeeding in addition to other food for up to two years of age or more.
In some cultures it is common to breastfeed children for three to five years, the period may be longer. Fresh goats' milk is sometimes substituted for breast milk, which introduces the risk of the child developing electrolyte imbalances, metabolic acidosis, megaloblastic anemia, a host of allergic reactions. In many cultures in the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other mammals as a food product; the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for digesting the lactose in milk. People therefore converted milk to curd and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood; this mutation allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed. Milk is processed into a variety of products such as cream, yogurt, ice cream, cheese.
Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, condensed milk, powdered milk, many other food-additives and industrial products. Whole milk and cream have high levels of saturated fat; the sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, a few tropical shrubs. The enzyme needed to digest lactose, reaches its highest levels in the human small intestine after birth and begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly; those groups who do continue to tolerate milk, however have exercised great creativity in using the milk of domesticated ungulates, not only of cattle, but sheep, yaks, water buffalo, horses and camels. India is buffalo milk in the world. In food use, from 1961, the term milk has been defined under Codex Alimentarius standards as: "the normal mammary secretion of milking animals obtained from one or more milkings without either addition to it or extraction from it, intended for consumption as liquid milk or for further processing." The term dairy relates to animal milk production.
A substance secreted by pigeons to feed their young is called "crop milk" and bears some resemblance to mammalian milk, although it is not consumed as a milk substitute. The definition above precludes non-animal products which resemble dairy milk in color and texture, such as almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, soy milk. In English, the word "milk" has been used to refer to "milk-like plant juices" since 1200 AD. In the USA, milk alternatives now command 13% of the "milk" market, leading the US dairy industry to attempt, multiple times, to sue producers of dairy milk alternatives, to have the name "milk" limited to animal milk, so far without success; the mammary gland is thought to have derived from apocrine skin glands. It has been suggested. Much of the argument is based on monotremes; the original adaptive significance of milk secretions may have been nutrition or immunological protection. This secretion became more copious and accrued nutritional complexity over evolutionary time. Tritylodontid cynodonts seem to have displayed lactation, based on
Thomas Thomson (chemist)
Thomas Thomson was a Scottish chemist and mineralogist whose writings contributed to the early spread of Dalton's atomic theory. His scientific accomplishments include the invention of the saccharometer and he gave silicon its current name, he served as president of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow. Thomson was the father of the botanist Thomas Thomson, the uncle and father-in-law of the Medical Officer of Health Robert Thomson. Thomas Thomson was born in Crieff in Perthshire, on 12 April 1773 the son of John Thomson and his wife, Elizabeth Ewan, he was educated at Stirling Burgh School. He studied for a general degree at the University of St. Andrews to study in classics and natural philosophy from 1787 to 1790, he had a five year break entered University of Edinburgh to study Medicine in 1795, graduating in 1799. During this latter period he was inspired by his tutor, Professor Joseph Black, to take up the study of chemistry. In 1796, Thomson succeeded his brother, James, as assistant editor of the Supplement to the Third Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, contributing the articles Chemistry and Vegetable, animal and dyeing substances.
In 1802, Thomson used these articles as the basis of his book System of Chemistry. His book Elements of Chemistry, published in 1810, displayed how volumes of different gasses react in a way in a way that supported the atomic theory. In 1802 he began teaching Chemistry in Edinburgh. In 1805 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers were Robert Jameson, William Wright, Thomas Charles Hope. Thomson dabbled in publishing, acted as a consultant to the Scottish excise board, invented the instrument known as Allan's saccharometer, opposed the geological theories of James Hutton, founding the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh as a platform in 1808. In March 1811 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1815 was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1813 he founded Annals of Philosophy a leader in its field of commercial scientific periodicals. In 1817 he gave silicon its present name, rejecting the suggested "silicium" because he felt the element had no metallic characteristics, that it chemically bore a close resemblance to boron and carbon.
In 1817, Thomson became Lecturer in and subsequently Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, retiring in 1841. In 1820 he identified a new zeolite mineral, named thomsonite in his honour, he lived his final years at 8 Brandon Place in Glasgow but died at Kilmun in Argyllshire in 1852, aged 79, was buried at Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh but has a memorial at the Glasgow Necropolis. In 1816 he married Agnes Colquhoun, he was uncle to Robert Dundas Thomson FRSE. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow of the Royal Society, System of Chemistry The Elements of Chemistry History of the Royal Society, from its institution to the end of the eighteenth century An Attempt to Establish the First Principles of Chemistry by Experiment History of Chemistry A System of Chemistry of Inorganic Bodies Chemistry of Animal Bodies Outlines of Mineralogy and Geology Chemistry From 1813 to 1822 he was Editor of the Annals of Philosophy. In June 2011, Russian artist Alexander Taratynov installed a life-size statue of French architect Thomas de Thomon in Saint Petersburg.
The statue is part of The Architects, a bronze sculptural group depicting the great architects of Russian Empire as commissioned by Gazprom and installed in Alexander Park. In 2018, Taratynov admitted he used a picture he found on Wikipedia to base the statue on, that it was an image of the Scottish chemist Thomas Thomson - Taratynov blamed Wikipedia for the error but himself for not checking with a historian to verify it was accurate; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Thomson, Thomas". Encyclopædia Britannica. 26. Cambridge University Press. "Biographical notice of the late Thomas Thomson". Glasgow Medical Journal. 5: 69–80, 121–153. 1857. Crum, W.. "Sketch of the life and labours of Dr Thomas Thomson". Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow. 3: 250–264. Thomson, R. D.. "Memoir of the late Dr Thomas Thomson". Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. 54: 86–98. Foundations of the atomic theory: comprising papers and extracts by John Dalton, William Hyde Wollaston, M. D. and Thomas Thomson, M. D..
Edinburgh: The Alembic Club. 1911. "Thomson, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900. "Thomas Thomson". Archived from the original on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 8 September 2008. "Significant Scots". Retrieved 8 September 2008. Works by Thomas Thomson at LibriVox
.jpg)
