Supposed fire-like element contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion, according to superseded scientific theories of the 17th and 18th centuries.
When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston.
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Also, the phlogiston has negative weight, as every school child must know.
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It was spreading, apparently just under the phlogiston layer, reflecting back the glare.
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The diamond and charcoal of copper are, as nearly as possible, pure phlogiston.
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On this principle, then, the metals were compound bodies, earths combined with phlogiston.
Uso de phlogiston theory em inglês
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By the late eighteenth century the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier had replaced phlogistontheory with caloric theory.
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At first the phlogistontheory seemed to explain in an indisputable way all the known chemical phenomena.
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Joseph Priestley, the courageous Unitarian and skeptic who discovered oxygen, was a believer in the phlogistontheory.
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His explanations of chemical phenomena were based on the phlogistontheory, in which, like Priestley, he always, believed.
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In 1771 he gave the first blow to the phlogistontheory by his experiments on the calcination of metals.
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The discovery of oxygen was the last but most important blow to the tottering phlogistontheory, though Priestley himself would not admit it.
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This was the final blow to the phlogistontheory, which, although it had been tottering for some time, had not been completely overthrown.
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He did much to overthrow the phlogistontheory, which was universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic were of the highest importance.