History
The concept of a reversible reaction was introduced by Berthollet in 1803, after he had observed the formation of sodium carbonate crystals at the edge of a salt lake (one of the natron lakes in Egypt, in limestone):
- 2NaCl + CaCO3 → Na2CO3 + CaCl2
He recognized this as the reverse of the familiar reaction
- Na2CO3 + CaCl2→ 2NaCl + CaCO3
Until then, chemical reactions were thought to always proceed in one direction. Berthollet reasoned that the excess of salt in the lake helped push the "reverse" reaction towards the formation of sodium carbonate.
In 1864, Waage and Guldberg formulated their law of mass action which quantified Berthollet's observation. Between 1884 and 1888, Le Chatelier and Braun formulated Le Chatelier's principle, which extended the same idea to a more general statement on the effects of factors other than concentration on the position of the equilibrium.
Read more about this topic: Reversible Reaction
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)