His gas collection techniques enabled him to work with
gases soluble in water. He showed that the processes of
combustion, respiration, and putrefaction caused one-fifth of air
exposed over water to disappear, and that plants restored air
vitiated by these processes. When he isolated oxygen, he noted
that it was better than air in supporting respiration and
combustion produced by heating certain metallic nitrates. The
differences between acids, bases, and salts and their relationship
to one another became understood. There was some theoretical as
well as empirical knowledge about metals, e.g. in boiling points,
intermetallic compounds, and changes in properties.
Static electricity was being discerned. It had been noticed that
shaking a mercury barometer produced a strange glow in its
"vacuum". Experiments showed that a glass rubbed in vacuo would
shine brightly and that an exhausted glass globe rapidly whirled
on a spindle and rubbing against the hand produced a brilliant
glow. And further, as Newton wrote: "if at the same time a piece
of white paper or white cloth, or the end of ones finger be held
at the distance of about a quarter of an inch or half an inch from
that part of the glass where it is most in motion, the electric
vapor which is excited by the friction of the glass against the
hand, will by dashing against the white paper, cloth, or finger,
be put into such an agitation as to emit light, and make the white
paper, cloth, or finger, appear lucid like a glowworm".
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