Is water H20?

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• Hasok Chang, Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
• Tuesday 18 November 2014, 19:45-21:15
• Meeting Room, Clare Hall, Herschel Road, Cambridge.

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Every schoolchild knows that water is H2O , but it was a terribly difficult thing for scientists to learn originally. The story begins with the ‘Chemical Revolution’ of the late 18th century, in which Lavoisier’s notion that water was a compound of oxygen and hydrogen flew in the face of the traditional wisdom that it was an element. Cavendish, who did the first synthesis of water from hydrogen and oxygen, thought that hydrogen and oxygen were merely water with an excess/deficit of ‘phlogiston’. Priestley, who made oxygen before Lavoisier, also defended the phlogiston theory. Even the electrolysis of water in 1800 failed to produce a consensus. And deciding that water was a compound was not the end of the story. Dalton gave the formula of water as HO, with atomic weights of H and O as (roughly) 1:8. It took half a century before consensus was reached on the modern set of atomic weights and molecular formulas including H2O . This story of the changing ontology of water is not only fascinating in itself, but illustrates many important points about the nature of scientific knowledge and its development.

This talk is part of the Clare Hall Colloquium series.

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