Law of Definite Proportions (stoichiometry)
Evidence for the existence of atoms was the law of definite proportions proposed by him in 1792. Richter found that the ratio by weight of the compounds consumed in a chemical reaction was always the same. It took 615 parts by weight of magnesia (MgO), for example, to neutralize 1000 parts by weight of sulfuric acid. A few years later, when Joseph Proust reported his work on the constant composition of chemical compounds, the time was ripe for the reinvention of an atomic theory. The law of definite proportions and constant composition do not prove that atoms exist, but they are difficult to explain without assuming that chemical compounds are formed when atoms combine in constant proportions.
Read more about this topic: Jeremias Benjamin Richter
Famous quotes containing the words law, definite and/or proportions:
“A strong person makes the law and custom null before his own will.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What are these essays but grotesque and monstrous bodies, pieced together of different members, without any definite shape, without any order, coherence, or proportion, except they be accidental?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.”
—Charlton Laird (b. 1901)