The First Refrigerator
The Early Periodic Table
In the spring of 1851 Dr. John Gorrie put Gay-Lusac 's variation of the ideal gas law into practice when he invented the first working refrigeration unit. Gorrie was a physician in Florida trying to combat malaria. At that time, spoiled food was suspected as a cause of the disease. Having a good knowledge of science, money to spend, and time to devote to his interest in inventing, Gorrie set to work on his idea of a 'cool box'. The would-be inventor looked at the variation of the ideal gas law that Gay-Lusac derived. In terms of practical applications, this formula says that if a gas is allowed to expand, it will consume heat from the surroundings. Gorrie reasoned that if the surroundings were isolated, the cooling effect could be utilized to produce ice, which could be used to keep food from spoiling. Using a steam pump, Gorrie assembled the first refrigeration unit.
Unfortunately, his idea was good but his design poor. His refrigerator did not have much success, but the idea of keeping things cool by utilizing the cooling power of an expanding gas would not be easily lost. Gorrie died without seeing his idea put into productive use, but he had started something which, with a little help from scientists and industrialists, would become an integral part of American life.
Though there had been many important discoveries in chemistry over the last few hundred years, many of the facts that were proven were not linked together in any coherent way that could help move the science forward. Many elements had been identified and many chemical theories existed to explain how and why the universe acted the way it did. In 1871, Dmitri Mendeleev published a table which would help to revolutionize how chemistry was to be carried out. Mendeleev's table listed the known elements in order of ascending atomic numbers. This was not a particularly innovative idea by itself. The twist which made Mendeleev's periodic table different was that he classified the known elements into columns and rows according to their properties as well. He left many empty spaces which predicted soon-to-be discovered elements. This table helped to guide the search for new elements and directed research into a deeper understanding of the known elements and their interactions.
More than just helping to show where new elements might be found, the periodic table showed how each element should react and identified the families of elements as they are understood today. The arrangement of the elements on the periodic tables is understood to be related to the number and arrangement of electrons in each element. Today, the periodic table is complete, in the sense that there are no longer any missing elements among the first 110 atomic numbers. Chemists continue to look for and create the higher atomic number elements guided by the knowledge of how many protons the new elements should contain and how these new elements will react once they are created.
The Periodic Table
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