Assignment 4

The culture of Europe during the Middle Ages to the Renaissance focused more towards a mechanical and natural method of explaining why science happens the way it does. The basis of this starts with the atomistic theories left behind by Greek atomists. Greek atomists had their work translated at the end of the Middle Ages by Europeans, and their concepts carried over into the 16^th century and Renaissance era of thinking. Through this theory, the idea that a substance can retain itself, or stay the same through various chemical changes, revolutionized the way scientists thought. The ideal of something skeletal in all chemicals, atoms, became apparent by the end of the Middle Ages (1). Before the idea of atom exchange and electron transferring physicians, chemists, and other scientists described chemical phenomena as transmutations, an idea that had stuck with them for centuries thanks to the alchemists before them. It wasn’t until physicians started explaining chemical changes as an exchange of atoms, and separation, that the idea of transmutation started to become obsolete (1). The famous scientists Galileo formulated the basis of mechanical philosophy. This concept describes particles as moving matter, rather than standing still atomic structures. This idea of motion translated over to other scientists’ theories of atoms. This forever changed the views of physicists and chemists in this era (1). In the seventeenth and eighteenth century chemists and scientists wanted to find out the nature of combustion and the forces behind it in order to utilize it for practical uses and understand what had a “nature of fire”(1). The atomistic theories developed earlier, at this point, have been widely accepted by the scientific community at this time in Europe. They also searched for a means of neutralizing acids and bases, experimenting greatly with mixing the two together in hopes of neutralizing or saturating one or the other (1).

Assignment 3

The advancements of chemistry, in the practical sense, did not seem to occur until the fourteenth and fifteen centuries. Paracelsus popularized the subject of iatrochemistry, the utilization of chemicals for healing human illnesses (88-89). It would be, however, that John of Rupescissa would be considered the founder of medical chemistry given his acquaintance with alchemy and his description of its methods (89). Rupescissa viewed alcohol as the main substance that makes up wine ,and he developed the theory that alcohol could be extracted from all things, utilizing antimony through extracting the suflide variation with vinegar (89). By the sixteenth century chemical methods could be described in full detail despite the fact that it wasn’t a foundation on its own. These sixteenth century scientists paved the way for the first chemists to arise in the seventeenth century. A scientist by the name of Hieronymus Brunschwygk published an important book that laid the foundation of understanding distillation. His work the Great Book of Distillation, is an enlarged edition of his work (93). Mineralogical and metallurgical chemistry emerged from the miner’s who were willing to share and explain the methods they utilized in order to benefit younger workers. The books centered around around quantitative determinations and helped spread influence to other fields of chemistry (94). These handbooks proved that chemistry was involved in many interests, not just the study of alchemists. A man named Paracelsus laid the foundation of modifying the older theories of medicine. His work to find remedies for illnesses hastened the discovery of new chemical substances as well (97).

Assignment 1

Greek Thought

The scientists of ancient Greece were not called scientists, but rather named philosophers of their filed of study. These philosophers brought the human race forward incredibly fast, so fast that some people doubt it ever happened. As Leicester explains in his fourth chapter, the major flaw that ancient Greek philosophers had in their scientific knowledge was their tendency to generalize without sufficient data and not checking their hypotheses with experimentation. Greek thoughts also centered around cosmological ideas such as everything being real thanks to fire or air. The elements fire, air, water, and earth were the focus of many studies in alchemy, the earliest form of chemistry, rather than the individual components of substances. Most of the sciences try to explain the origin of the universe and what is in store, but Plato started looking to the future rather than the past in an attempt to understand the end goal of the universe. He also went in to explain atoms as a planar type structure that could bind together to only form cubic type structures. All of these thoughts trace back to the four elements of Empedocles. Any progression of the thoughts towards atomic structure was tossed aside in Greek society after alchemy was introduced. All of this halted any progression in chemistry for 1000 years.

Gold Article

This article focuses on the making of colloidal gold through older methods that date back to the 18^th century in order to possibly create sub-nanometer gold nanoparticles that are widely sought out for their oxidation capabilities of organic substrates when utilizing oxygen. These methods were at first used to color glass and create a medicine utilizing gold. Through notes of chemists from the two periods they were looking at they concluded that gold particles were formed in the process of oily mixtures and distilling methods used to create these colloids. Through the utilization of current technology they were able to recreate the reactions and see for themselves the possibilities and results of these nanoparticles forming. The oils used in these reactions seem to allow the production of gold clusters and nanoparticles without hindrance. All in all the article’s author seemed confident that these methods should be looked into in order to produce these particles given the success they seemed to bring.

Ransom Calculation

41,025.64  gold per kg

Today’s Price of gold and silver per kg

568.43  silver per kg

Inca’s Ransom:

6,087 kg gold x 42,025.64 USD/kg =  2.497 x 10⁸ USD

11,793 kg silver x 568.43 USD/kg = 6.703 x 10⁶ USD

2.564 x 10⁸ USD total for Inca’s Ransom