TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Calcination

Calcination Quotes (4 quotes)

About eight days ago I discovered that sulfur in burning, far from losing weight, on the contrary, gains it; it is the same with phosphorus; this increase of weight arises from a prodigious quantity of air that is fixed during combustion and combines with the vapors. This discovery, which I have established by experiments, that I regard as decisive, has led me to think that what is observed in the combustion of sulfur and phosphorus may well take place in the case of all substances that gain in weight by combustion and calcination; and I am persuaded that the increase in weight of metallic calxes is due to the same cause... This discovery seems to me one of the most interesting that has been made since Stahl and since it is difficult not to disclose something inadvertently in conversation with friends that could lead to the truth I have thought it necessary to make the present deposit to the Secretary of the Academy to await the time I make my experiments public.
Sealed note deposited with the Secretary of the French Academy 1 Nov 1772. Oeuvres de Lavoisier, Correspondance, Fasc. II. 1770-75 (1957), 389-90. Adapted from translation by A. N. Meldrum, The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Science (1930), 3.
Science quotes on:  |  Academy (37)  |  Air (366)  |  Arise (162)  |  Burn (99)  |  Burning (49)  |  Cause (561)  |  Combination (150)  |  Combine (58)  |  Combustion (22)  |  Compound (117)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Conversation (46)  |  Decisive (25)  |  Difficult (263)  |  Disclose (19)  |  Discover (571)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Due (143)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Friend (180)  |  Gain (146)  |  Increase (225)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Lead (391)  |  Letter (117)  |  Most (1728)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Observed (149)  |  Phosphorus (18)  |  Present (630)  |  Prodigious (20)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Reaction (106)  |  Regard (312)  |  Something (718)  |  Georg Ernst Stahl (9)  |  Substance (253)  |  Sulfur (5)  |  Sulphur (19)  |  Think (1122)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Vapor (12)  |  Weight (140)

I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.
Quoted in R. Oesper, The Human Side of Scientists (1975), 150. [Spagyric is a form of herbalism based on alchemic procedures of preparation.]
Science quotes on:  |  Alchemy (31)  |  Alone (324)  |  Apron (2)  |  Busy (32)  |  Charcoal (10)  |  Chatter (3)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Coagulation (5)  |  Coal (64)  |  Cure (124)  |  Dagger (3)  |  Day And Night (3)  |  Dirt (17)  |  Dirty (17)  |  Distillation (11)  |  Do (1905)  |  Extraction (10)  |  Finger (48)  |  Fire (203)  |  Fixation (5)  |  Glove (4)  |  Gold (101)  |  Golden (47)  |  Gorgeous (2)  |  Gossip (10)  |  Hand (149)  |  Help (116)  |  Hide (70)  |  Know (1538)  |  Laboratory (214)  |  Learning (291)  |  Leather (4)  |  Little (717)  |  Loafer (2)  |  Master (182)  |  Must (1525)  |  Patience (58)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Praise (28)  |  Putrefaction (4)  |  Recreation (23)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Reverberation (3)  |  Ring (18)  |  Rubbish (12)  |  Satin (2)  |  Seek (218)  |  Separation (60)  |  Show (353)  |  Sick (83)  |  Side (236)  |  Silk (14)  |  Silver (49)  |  Smith (3)  |  Solution (282)  |  Soot (11)  |  Step (234)  |  Tend (124)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Thrust (13)  |  Velvet (4)  |  White (132)  |  Wipe (6)  |  Word (650)  |  Work (1402)

In my youth I often asked what could be the use and necessity of smelting by putting powdered charcoal at the bottom of the furnace. Nobody could give me any other reason except that the metal and especially lead, could bury itself in the charcoal and so be protected against the action of the bellows which would calcine or dissipate it. Nevertheless it is evident that this does not answer the question. I accordingly examined the operation of a metallurgical furnace and how it was used. In assaying some litharge [lead oxide], I noticed each time a little charcoal fell into the crucible, I always obtained a bit of lead … I do not think up to the present time foundry-men ever surmised that in the operation of founding with charcoal there was something [phlogiston] which became corporeally united with the metal.
Traité de Soufre (1766), 64. French translation published 1766, first published in German in 1718.
Science quotes on:  |  Action (342)  |  Against (332)  |  Answer (389)  |  Ask (420)  |  Asking (74)  |  Bellows (5)  |  Charcoal (10)  |  Crucible (8)  |  Dissipate (8)  |  Dissipation (2)  |  Do (1905)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Evident (92)  |  Examination (102)  |  Furnace (13)  |  Lead (391)  |  Litharge (2)  |  Little (717)  |  Metal (88)  |  Necessity (197)  |  Nevertheless (90)  |  Nobody (103)  |  Obtain (164)  |  Operation (221)  |  Other (2233)  |  Phlogiston (9)  |  Powder (9)  |  Present (630)  |  Protect (65)  |  Question (649)  |  Reason (766)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Something (718)  |  Think (1122)  |  Time (1911)  |  Use (771)  |  Youth (109)

The condensed air becomes attached to [the metallic calx], and adheres little by little to the smallest of its particles: thus its weight increases from the beginning to the end: but when all is saturated, it can take up no more.
Jean Rey
The Increase in Weight of Tin and Lead on Calcination (1630), Alembic Club Reprint (1895), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Adherence (2)  |  Air (366)  |  Attach (57)  |  Attached (36)  |  Attachment (7)  |  Become (821)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Condensation (12)  |  End (603)  |  Increase (225)  |  Lead (391)  |  Little (717)  |  Metal (88)  |  More (2558)  |  Particle (200)  |  Saturation (9)  |  Small (489)  |  Tin (18)  |  Weight (140)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.