If I believed each element were the spirit of a god,
then Hydrogène, the water-former,
would command my respect.
Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant element
in the universe.
Hydrogen unites with oxygen to make water
which assumes myriad forms—
the vast and deep oceans
clouds, rivers, springs, lakes
snowflakes
sheets of ice
dew on a spider’s web
and water is safe to drink.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, but
Antoine Lavoisier named it oxygène, meaning
“acid-former” in Greek. Lavoisier also named
Cavendish’s inflammable air hydrogène,
“water-former” in Greek, because it produces water
when it is burned.
It is strange that water extinguishes a fire when both of
its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are highly reactive, but
water seldom extinguishes a fire by smothering it; instead, the
heat of the fire vaporizes the water, and the energy required for
this starves the fire of the heat needed for the chain reaction.
Also a vocabulary note. In English,
“inflammable” and “flammable” have the
same meaning.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, but Antoine Lavoisier named it oxygène, meaning “acid-former” in Greek. Lavoisier also named Cavendish’s inflammable air hydrogène, “water-former” in Greek, because it produces water when it is burned.
It is strange that water extinguishes a fire when both of its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are highly reactive, but water seldom extinguishes a fire by smothering it; instead, the heat of the fire vaporizes the water, and the energy required for this starves the fire of the heat needed for the chain reaction.
Also a vocabulary note. In English, “inflammable” and “flammable” have the same meaning.
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