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Born
Robert Boyle was a 17th-century natural philosopher, chemist,physicist.He was born in Waterford, Ireland
in 25 January 1627.
He is the seventh son and fourteenth child of Richard Boyle . -
Education
As a child,Boyle was fosted to a local family.He received private tutoring in Latin,Greek and French and when he was eight years old , following the deathh of his mother , he was sent to Eton college in England -
Travelling
After spending over three years at Eton, Robert travelled aborad with a french tutor,Robert travelled aborad with a French tutor.They visited Italy in 1641 and remained in Florence during the winer of that year studying the "paradoxes of the great star-gazer" Galileo Galilei, who was elderly but still living in 1641 -
middle years
Boyle returned to England from Continetal Europe in mid-1644 with a keen interest for scientific research.Robert devoted his life to scientific research and soon took a prominent place in the band of enquirers, known as the "Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the cultivation of the "new philosophy". -
Research on vaccum
Boyle conducted many experiments on the nature of "rarefied" or low pressure air. He showed that sound does not travel through a vacuum, flames require air and animals need air to live. In the appendix which contains Boyle's Law, he also defends the idea that a vacuum can exist where popular belief at the time was otherwise. -
find the element
In 1661 Robert Boyle raised an important objection to this model. In his book,he noted that it was impossible to combine the four Greek elements to form any substance and it was equally impossible to extract these elements from a substance. He therefore proposed a new definition of an element that became the basis for the modern definition of this concept -
Boyle's Law
The ideal gas law which Boyle is known for actually appears in an appendix written in 1662.
He said If you trap a sample of air and measure its volume at different pressures (constant temperature), then you can determine a relation between volume and pressure. If you do this experiment, you will find that as the pressure of a gas sample increases, its volume decreases. In other words, the volume of a gas sample at constant temperature is inversely proportional to its pressure. -
candle burning experiment
Robert Boyle states that air is necessary for candles to burn. the candle heats the air and expands it. This cancels the depletion of the oxygen temporarily and the water level stays down. When the oxygen is depleted, the candle goes out and the air cools. The volume of the air decreases and the water rises. The temporary temperature change delays the rise of the water. As several readers have pointed out, also the water condensation should be mentioned. While water is initially gas, it condens -
produces hydrogen
Robert Boyle produces hydrogen by reacting metals with acid at 1670. -
died
Robert Boyle: pioneer of modern science.
He has been called "the father of modern chemistry" and "the man who turned chemistry into a science"