An Introduction to Chemical Science

by Rufus P. Williams

337. Food of Man.—In the higher animals the object is not so much to increase the size as to supply the waste of the system. The principal elements in man's body are C, H, O, N, S, P.

An illustration of the transformation of mineral foods by plants before they can be used by animals is found in the Ca3(PO4)2 of bones. This is rendered soluble; plants absorb and transform it; animals eat the plants and obtain the phosphates. Thus man is said to "eat his own bones." The food of mankind may be divided into four classes (1) proteids, which contain C, H, O, N, and often S and P; (2) fats, and (3) amyloids, both of which contain C, H, O; (4) minerals. Examples of the first class are the gluten of flour, the albumen of the white of egg, and the casein of cheese. To the second class belong fats and oils; to the third, starch, sugar, and gums; to the fourth, H2O, NaCl and other salts. Since only proteids contain all the requisite elements, they are essential to human food, and are the only absolutely essential ones, except minerals; but since they do not contain all the elements in the proportion needed by the system, a mixed diet is indispensable. Milk, better than any other single food, supplies the needs of the system. The digestion and assimilation of these food-stuffs and the composition of the various tissues is too complicated to be taken up here; for their discussion the reader is referred to works on physiological chemistry.

338. Conservation.—Plants, in growing, decompose CO2, and thereby store up energy, the energy derived from the light and heat of the sun. When they decay, or are burned, or are eaten by animals, exactly the same amount of energy is liberated, or changed from potential to kinetic, and the same amount of CO2 is restored to the air. The tree that took a hundred years to complete its growth may be burned in an hour, or be many years in decaying; but in either case it gives back to its mother Nature, all the matter and energy that it originally borrowed. The ash from burning plants represents the earthy matter, or salts, which the plant assimilated during its growth; the rest is volatile. In the growth and destruction of plants or of animals, both energy and matter have undergone transformation. Animals, in feeding on plants, transform the energy of sunlight into the energy of vitality. Thus "we are children of the sun."

CHAPTER LXI.

THEORIES.

339. The La Place Theory.—This theory supposes that at one time the earth and the other planets, together with the sun, constituted a single mass of vapor, extending billions of miles in space; that it rotated around its center; that it gradually shrank in volume by the transformation of potential into kinetic energy; that portions of its outer rim were thrown off, and finally condensed into planets; that our sun is only the remainder of that central mass which still rotates and carries the planets around with it; that the earth is a cooling globe; that the other planets are going through the same phases as the earth; and finally that the sun itself is destined like them to become a cold body.

340. A Cooling Earth.—The sun's temperature is variously estimated at many thousands, or even millions oŁ degrees. Many metals which exist on the earth as solids -e.g. iron- are gases in the dense atmosphere of the sun. Thus the earth, in its early existence, must have been composed of gases only, which in after ages condensed into liquids and solids. So intense was the heat at that time, that substances probably existed as elements instead of compounds, i.e. the temperature was above the point of dissociation. We have seen that Al2O3, CaO, SiO2, etc., are dissociated at the highest temperatures only. If the temperature were above that of combination, compounds could not exist as such, but matter would exist in its elemental state. On slowly cooling, these elements would combine. It is, then, a fair inference that such compounds as need the highest temperatures to separate them, as silica, silicates, and some oxides, were formed from their elements at a much earlier stage of the earth's history than were those compounds that are more easily separable, such as water, lead sulphide, etc., and that the most infusible substances were solidified first.

341. Evolution.—As the earth slowly cooled, elements united to form compounds, gases condensed to liquids, and these to solids. At one time the entire surface of our planet may have been liquid. When the cooling surface reached a point somewhat below that of boiling water, the lowest forms of life appeared in the ocean. This was many millions of years ago. Most scientists believe that all vegetable and animal life has developed from the lowest forms of life. There is also a theory that all chemical elements are derivatives of hydrogen, or of some other element, and that all the so-called elements are really compounds, which a sufficiently high temperature would dissociate. As evidence of this, it is said that less than half as many elements have been discovered in the sun as in the earth, and that comets and nebula, which are less developed forms of matter than the sun, have a few simple substances only.

It is easy to fancy that all living bodies, both animal and vegetable, are only natural growths from the lowest forms of life; that these lowest forms are a development, with new manifestations of energy, from inorganic matter; that compounds are derived from elements; and that the last are derivatives of some one element; but it must be borne in mind that this is only a theory.

342. New Theory of Chemistry. We have seen that heat lies at the basis of chemical as well as of physical changes. By the loss of heat, or perhaps by the change of potential into kinetic energy, in a nebulous parent mass, planets were formed, capable of supporting living organisms. Heat changes solids to liquids, and liquids to gases; it resolves compounds, or it aids chemical union. In every chemical combination heat is developed; in every case of dissociation heat is absorbed. Properly written, every equation should be: a + b = c + heat; e.g. 2 H + 0 = H2O + heat; or, c - a = b - heat; e.g. H2O - 2 H = 0 - heat. Another illustration is the combination of C and O, and the dissociation of CO2, as given on page 82. C + O2 = CO2 + energy. CO2 - O2 = C - energy. In fact, there are indications that the present theory of atoms and molecules of matter, as the foundation of chemistry, will at no distant day give place to a theory of chemistry based on the forms of energy, of which heat is a manifestation.