Antoine Lavoisier’s Solar Powered Diamond Combustion Machine,Today considered the “fathe

Antoine Lavoisier’s Solar Powered Diamond Combustion Machine,Today considered the “father of modern chemistry”, Antoine Lavoisier is forever remembered for his discovery of modern elements, formulation of the Law of Conservation of Mass, and the Oxygen Theory of Combustion.  What Lavoisier did best was burning things.  An 18th century pyromaniac, Lavoisier conducted countless experiments in which he would burn different substances with different gasses.  Such experiments proved his theory that matter is neither created and destroyed but changes form (Conservation of Mass), as well as led him to the discovery and identification of hydrogen.Perhaps Lavoisier’s most ambitious experiment was to burn a diamond in order to break it down into it’s basic elements.  However, in 18th century France you don’t just burn a diamond.  Today one doesn’t just burn a diamond.  Seriously, try it!  One will discover that neither a match, nor a lighter, nor the aid of gasoline will cause a diamond to combust.  To burn a diamond temperatures of around 1520 degrees Fahrenheit are needed.  So what would Lavoisier use in 18th century France?In 1772 Lavoisier directed the construction of a large solar machine called the “Great Burning Lense of Tschirnhausen”.  The device featured a large frame from which two large convex lenses were placed, a smaller one placed directly behind a larger lense.  The lenses themselves were crafted by the Tschirnhaus family of Germany, who for generations had produced mirrors, lenses, and windows.  When positioned directly in front of the sun, the device focused a beam of light onto a very small point, creating intense heat.  Furthermore Lavoisier placed the diamond in a glass globe which contained pure oxygen, due to the fact that the flammability of substances increases in a pure oxygen environment.  Lavoisier’s device was a success as the sun beam produced enough heat to cause a diamond to burn with a small ‘poof’.  As a result of his experiments, Lavoisier was able to determine that diamonds are a crystalline form of pure carbon.  Lavoisier continued more experiments with the device, until he later adopted a more efficient and smaller machine which used alcohol filled glass lenses to concentrate light.  Unfortunately during the French Revolution Chemistry, and science in general, was repressed by the new French Republic.  First his laboratory was closed, then Antoine Lavoisier was executed in 1794.  Most of his equipment was seized and destroyed. -- source link

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