July 14, 1811 - Amedeo Avogadro publishes the law that bears his name

The great Italian physicist and chemist Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro Bocado, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto, published the law that bears his name and for which he has become famous.

He relied on John Dalton's atomic theory and Gay-Lussac's law on motion vectors in the molecule.

The y goes like this:

"Volumini uguali di diversi, alla stessa temperatura e pressuree, contengono lo stesso numero di molecole" ("Equal volumes of different gases under the same conditions of pressure and temperature, contain the same number of molecules")

In 1811, he sent a memoir with the development of this theory to the "Journal de Physicque, de Chimie et d'Histoire naturelle" with the title "Essai d'une manière de déterminer les masses relatives des moelcules élémentaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles elles entrent dans ces combinaisons" (A trial of a way of determining the relative masses of the elementary molecules of bodies, and the proportions according to which they enter into these combinations).

Avogadro's constant

The most important challenge he had to overcome was related to the confusion that existed at that time between atoms and molecules. One of his greatest contributions was to clarify the distinction between the two concepts, admitting that molecules can be made up of equal atoms (a difference that Dalton did not establish, for example). To tell the truth, he never used the word atom in his works because in those days the terms atom and molecule were used interchangeably, but he considered that there were three types of molecules, one of which was an elementary molecule (what we call atom).

He also differentiated between the terms mass and weight.

Later, in 1814, he published "Mémoire sur les masses relatives des molecules des corps simples, ou densités présumées de leur gaz, et sur la constitution de quelques-uns de leur composés, pour servir de suite à l'Essai sur le même sujet "(Memory on the relative masses of the molecules of simple bodies, or expected densities of their gas, and on the constitution of some of their compounds, to subsequently serve as an essay on the same subject) that dealt with the density of gases .

If you want to know more about this scientist, click: Amedeo Avogadro

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