Blackie’s Dictionary Of Chemistry

An important point to remember is that chemistry is a science, which means its procedures are systematic and reproducible and its hypotheses are tested using the scientific method. Chemists, scientists who study chemistry, examine the properties and composition of matter and the interactions between substances. Chemistry is closely related to physics and to biology. As is true for other sciences, mathematics is an essential tool for the study of chemistry. An important milestone was the theory of conservation of mass, developed by Antoine Lavoisier in 1783. The law of conservation of mass holds that no mass is created or destroyed in a chemical reaction – if you burn a log in an enclosed container, the container will weigh exactly as much as it did prior to the reaction, only it will change to ash. Because of his efforts in popularizing chemistry and making it more accessible to the common person, Lavoisier is often regarded as the father of modern chemistry.