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Chemistry for beginners

Chapter 34: THE NATURE OF MATTER
By Hereward Carrington
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Science - Chemistry/Biochemistry

About This Book

A concise introduction traces chemistry's development from ancient Greek and alchemical ideas through medieval practice to modern atomic theory and the periodic law. It explains elements, atomic weights, valency, analysis and synthesis, and differentiates organic and inorganic chemistry, including catalysis, enzymes, and hormones. Practical topics include spectroscopic methods, industrial chemistry, instruments, and ocean salinity. Later chapters address radioactivity, intra-atomic energy, electrons, astrophysical applications, and discussions on the origin of life and the philosophical implications connecting chemical theory with metaphysical questions.

THE NATURE OF MATTER

These newer researches in chemistry have finally enabled us to realize the ultimate constitution of matter; we have seen that it is composed of atoms, but these atoms themselves are complex things; they in turn are composed of electrons, and in the last analysis matter may be said to be non-existent! It has been resolved into electricity. But this conception of matter has also enabled us to explain many things before inexplicable—chemical combination, radio-activity, and what not. The world-old problem as to the nature of matter has at last been solved. It now devolves upon the physicist to explain the ultimate nature of electricity!

Matter, then, in a sense, can dissociate, disintegrate, dematerialize. It can also integrate, materialize, come into existence. Matter can be made to vanish and reappear. The old law of the “indestructibility of matter” is not valid, as generally understood. Matter can be resolved into energy. And this energy is radiated into space, or converted into other modes of energy, and finally into heat, which is in turn radiated into the surrounding medium. The whole universe seems to resemble a clock, which has been wound-up, and is slowly running down. Even the law of the “conservation of energy” has been called into question (See LeBon, “The Evolution of Matter,” and “The Evolution of Forces”). Is the whole Universe in some mysterious manner also being wound-up? Or does it move in vast cycles, of alternate action and inaction, as the Hindu philosophers have always contended? These are ultimate questions which only the science of the future can solve!