Oxidation-reduction
Originally chemists viewed oxidation as a class of chemical reactions in which a chemical species (e.g., a chemical element, compound) reacts with oxygen to form an oxygen-containing product referred to as an 'oxide'.[1] In modern terminology, chemists would describe that as the chemical species reacting with an oxygen molecule (O2) such that it combines with an atom of oxygen (O) to form an oxygen-containing product, as when hydrogen (H2) reacts with O2 to form the oxygen-containing product, H2O, namely water:
- 2H2 + O2 → 2H2O
In that reaction, each molecular pair of hydrogen atoms has been 'oxidized' by gaining an oxygen atom.
The 'Father of Chemistry', Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), in his Elements of Chemistry (originally published in French in 1789), writes of oxidation in relation to the products formed when metals (e.g., mercury, iron) are exposed to air and a certain amount of heat:
The term oxidation, or calcination, is chiefly used to signify the process by which metals exposed to a certain degree of heat are converted to oxides, by absorbing oxygen from the air.[2]
Lavoisier's work revealed the common link between the air-requiring processes of burning (combustion), rusting and other such so-called calcinations of metals, and breathing (respiration) by animals, namely the requirement for the oxygen component of air and the chemical reaction of oxidation.
References
- ↑ Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. (1789) Traité élémentaire de chimie: présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes . Chez Cuchet. | Google Books Full-View.
- ↑ Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1799). Elements of Chemistry: In a new systematic order, containing all the modern discoveries, illustrated with thirteen copperplates, 4th Edition, translated by Robert Kerr. Google Books free full-text.