The group 16 elements: the chalcogens

The elements

The Group 16 elements have a particular name chalcogenes. [link] lists the derivation of the names of the halogens.

Discovery

Oxygen

The 2 ^nd century BC Greek writer, Philo of Byzantium, observed that inverting a jar over a burning candle and surrounding the jar’s neck with water resulted in some water rising into the neck. He incorrectly ascribed this to the idea that part of the air in the vessel were converted into the element fire and thus were able to escape through pores in the glass. Much later Leonardo da Vinci ( [link] ) suggested that this effect was actually due to a portion of air being consumed during combustion.

By the late 17 ^th century, Robert Boyle ( [link] ) showed that air is necessary for combustion. His work was expanded by English chemist John Mayow ( [link] ) by showing that fire requires only a part of air that he called spiritus nitroaereus or just nitroaereus .

The reactive nature of nitroaereus was implied by Mayow from his observation that antimony (Sb) increased in weight when heated in air. He also suggested that the lungs separate nitroaereus from air and pass it into the blood and that animal heat and muscle movement result from the reaction of nitroaereus with certain substances in the body; both concepts that were proven to be correct.

Robert Hooke ( [link] ), Ole Borch ( [link] ), Mikhail Lomonosov (id1168366758158), and Pierre Bayen ( [link] ) all produced oxygen in experiments in the 17 ^th and the 18 ^th century but none of them recognized it as an element, probably since the prevalence at that time of the phlogiston, and their attempts to fit their experimental observations to that theory.