September 09, 2016 Friday
Bedtime Story
Respiration is combustion
How would you measure heat?
Or rather, how would you compare heat given out by 2 objects?
In those dark ages in 1780s before electricity came to be, Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace thought of an ingenious idea.
Ice melting!
By measuring the amount of melted ice, one can compare the heat given out by 2 objects or even processes.
They devised a large apparatus of 3 layers.
The inner most chamber would contain either a burning object or a breathing animal (in their case guinea pig).
The middle layer contained packed ice with an outflow nozzle to collect the water from the melted ice.
The outermost layer once again contained packed ice which acted as an insulator for the ice pack in the middle.
They also devised a way of collecting carbon dioxide that accumulated in the innermost compartment.
Guinea pigs were kept inside the apparatus and noted how much carbon dioxide was generated and how much of water had melted.
This was compared with burning different amounts of carbon such that they could narrow it down to equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide and water.
You can surely imagine how tedious this whole process would have been.
The result of the experiments were published in now what is a landmark treatise:
"Memoir on Heat" that was read out to the Royal Academy of Sciences on June 28, 1783 by both Lavoisier and Laplace.
The experiment proved 2 things:
1. In words of Lavoisier "the respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, like that of a candle burning".
2. This slow combustion that took place in the lungs of animals was responsible for the animal heat that was still a mystery then.
The heat allows the animals to maintain their body temperatures at much higher than that of the surroundings.
You got to see the picture of this ice calorimeter.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Bedtime Story
Respiration is combustion
How would you measure heat?
Or rather, how would you compare heat given out by 2 objects?
In those dark ages in 1780s before electricity came to be, Antoine Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace thought of an ingenious idea.
Ice melting!
By measuring the amount of melted ice, one can compare the heat given out by 2 objects or even processes.
They devised a large apparatus of 3 layers.
The inner most chamber would contain either a burning object or a breathing animal (in their case guinea pig).
The middle layer contained packed ice with an outflow nozzle to collect the water from the melted ice.
The outermost layer once again contained packed ice which acted as an insulator for the ice pack in the middle.
They also devised a way of collecting carbon dioxide that accumulated in the innermost compartment.
Guinea pigs were kept inside the apparatus and noted how much carbon dioxide was generated and how much of water had melted.
This was compared with burning different amounts of carbon such that they could narrow it down to equivalent amounts of carbon dioxide and water.
You can surely imagine how tedious this whole process would have been.
The result of the experiments were published in now what is a landmark treatise:
"Memoir on Heat" that was read out to the Royal Academy of Sciences on June 28, 1783 by both Lavoisier and Laplace.
The experiment proved 2 things:
1. In words of Lavoisier "the respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, like that of a candle burning".
2. This slow combustion that took place in the lungs of animals was responsible for the animal heat that was still a mystery then.
The heat allows the animals to maintain their body temperatures at much higher than that of the surroundings.
You got to see the picture of this ice calorimeter.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Ice Calorimeter that showed respiration to be combustion
No comments:
Post a Comment