Chemistry problem?

Question

In the years following the French Revolution, Joseph Gay-Lussac made several important discoveries about how ages combine. For example, he noted that three volumes of hydrogen react with one volume of nitrogen to form two volumes of ammonia. Keep in mind that in those times, scientists did not know about atoms or formulas of compounds.
a) Write a balanced chemical equation for this reaction.
b) How does this equation relate to Gay-Lussac's findings?
c) What can you infer about the contents of two equal volumes of reacting gases?
d) What word could be substituted for the word "volume" to describe this reaction on the simplest level?
e) What type of reaction did Gay-Lussac perform?

Answer 1

Let ammonia becalled A

a. 3volH + 1 volN ===> 2volA

b. The volumes of reacting gases and their products are to one another as a ratio of small whole numbers (3/1/2).

c. Absolutely nothing! This is an extremely important answer to this part of the problem. The answer to this problem had chemists tied up in knots from 1813 to 1861. The expected answer is "Equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of atoms."

But keep in mind that the question asks us to "Keep in mind that in those times, scientists did not know about atoms or formulas of compounds." But look at line a. Somehow 1 atom of nitrogen gets cut in half to make 2 molecules of ammonia. But if an atom is the smallest part of an element that can exist, how can you cut it in half?

d. Maybe litre, although the metric system was not in use in 1808.

e. Synthesis.

In 1861, at a chemical congress in Karlsruhe, Germany, Stanislao Cannizzaro presented a paper about how he taught the material at the University of Turin. He said that he asked students to assume that gaseous were diatomic gases. Then everything fell out. After that, people went home from Germanyt and things began to make sense.