Who Invented Molecular Formulas

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Throughout the history of chemistry, one of the most basic things used to solve problems is a formula. Formulas are so fundamental in chemistry, and in other fields, that they were used before the periodic table was arranged and well before the elements we know now were discovered. Formulas have proven to be very useful and have drastically increased the speed at which problems can be solved. For example, Lavoisier, a natural philosopher, had much difficulty in making quantitative predictions to prove that in any reaction the mass of the reactants has to equal the mass of products. He was unable to calculate the number of pounds of salt needed to make a hundred pounds of soda. For this reason, thousands of numerical relationships needed to …show more content…

Not knowing how to calculate the molecular formulas, and not even knowing what molecular formulas are for that matter, proved to be a challenging obstacle for Lavoisier to overcome. Once it was proved that compound atoms had fixed and definite compositions, the first molecular formulas emerged. Oddly, it was John Dalton, a physicist, who discovered the first molecular formulas (Salzberg, 209). Dalton did this by calculating atomic weights through selective interatomic repulsions, and from these repulsions he derived the first molecular formulas. Although it is odd that a physicist derived the formulas used in chemistry, this shows how empirical and molecular formulas have always been necessary in all the …show more content…

These formulas all show what elements are in a compound, and by dividing the mass of all the atoms of an element in a compound by the mass of the whole compound, the percent composition of that element can be determined. This process is the main reason these formulas are important in chemistry. Another reason they are important is that in some compounds with network structures, there are no discrete molecules. This means that the empirical formula is the only one used to describe substances such as diamonds. In physics, these formulas are used in a different way. Empirical formulas in this field are used not to derive chemical equations, but to predict observable results. The most well known formula that does this is the Rydberg Formula, discovered by Janne Rydberg (Martinson and Curtis). This formula predicts the wavelengths of hydrogen spectral lines and was used to perfectly predict the wavelengths of the Lyman series. This experiment was not understood, however, until Niels Bohr produced the Bohr model in

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