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You are here: Home / Science / What Were Some of Antoine Lavoisier’s Other Discoveries and What Does the Word Hydrogen Mean In Greek?

What Were Some of Antoine Lavoisier’s Other Discoveries and What Does the Word Hydrogen Mean In Greek?

February 17, 2020 by Karen Hill

Some of Antoine Lavoisier’s other discoveries were so far ahead of their time that his fellow scientists had trouble accepting them.

He applied what he had learned about combustion and oxygen to the human body.

As a result of his experiments, he knew that we take in oxygen through the air and exhale the waste product of carbon dioxide.

Adding that to our intake of food as a “fuel” for energy, he realized that the body heat we produce is a result of the combustion of food and oxygen.

In 1766, the English scientist Henry Cavendish had isolated a very light, flammable gas by dropping bits of iron, tin, and zinc into hydrochloric acid.

Cavendish thought he had discovered phlogiston. He was also very confused by the puddle of water that resulted when he burned this gas.

The brilliant Lavoisier repeated the experiment and knew exactly what it meant.

Lavoisier named the gas hydrogen, from the Greek for “water-producing”, and deduced that water must be a combination of the two gases, oxygen and hydrogen.

Related Facts

  • Who Was Antoine Lavoisier and Why Was Lavoisier Known As the Father Of Chemistry?
  • What Was Antoine Lavoisier's Horrible End and Why Was Lavoisier Sentenced To Death By Guillotine?
  • How Did Antoine Lavoisier Disprove the Phlogiston Theory and What Does the Word Oxygen Mean In Greek?
  • What Is the Law of the Conservation of Matter and How Did Antoine Lavoisier Discover the Theory?
  • How Did Antoine Lavoisier Devise a Systematic Chemical Nomenclature and What Was the First Chemistry Textbook?
  • How long did French Chemist Antoine Lavoisier's head live for after being severed by a guillotine?

Filed Under: Science

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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