Transmutacja. Dziecko alchemii, osiągnięcie chemii
Streszczenie
Alchemy is one of protosciences but it was science until the Enlightenment, when the chemistry was formed.
History of alchemy didn’t end in the Enlightenment, but it influences art and culture until today. One of the most
basic alchemy therms “transmutation”, means transforming metals like lead in to gold, have been developed and then
abandoned with alchemy fall, but return in today science. Therm transmutation was developed in ancient Egypt as
effect of metallurgy procedures. From about 3000 b.c. Egyptians were forging metals, they had more gold than silver
so silver was more valuable for them, so they were trying to obtain silver and gold from less valuable metals. They
manage to obtain gold-like alloys. Process of obtaining was similar for them to dyeing, so they used to name it so.
Then Greeks conquered Egypt and Greek philosophy tried to describe mechanism of transmutation using the
elements' theory. In medieval Arabs tried to describe and develop alchemy using ancient knowledge, forgotten by
medieval Europe. One of the Arabic alchemist named Geber formed theory of two crucial ingredients sulfur and
mercury — their combination should give any metal. After Arab gold era and after end of medieval Europeans start
to care about science and rediscovered alchemy. Then after medieval era alchemy had strong, not only physical, but
also spiritual element.
We can say that in 1661 alchemy became protoscience because in that year R. Boyl publish “ The Skeptical
Chymist” what is seen as beginning of chemistry and the end of the alchemy, as a science. With beginning of
chemistry transmutation were seen as legend but after many years we know that turning one element into another is
possible. Science manages to perform transmutation using knowledge, about quantum mechanics, from end of XIX
and XX century. Today we still try to use process of transmutation to obtain more and more energy from atomic
fission. Our chance for it can be development of nuclear reactors, named 4th and 5th generation.
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