Основы химии
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The textbook in which Mendeleev first set out his periodic law, in its last edition from his lifetime. Its Introduction asks what changes when one substance turns into another and what stays the same: the weight on Lavoisier's balance, the elements, the fixed proportions in which they combine.
This is a sample: 1 of 25 chapters.
Put a bottle with a little vinegar and a small paper twist of baking soda on a kitchen scale, and stretch a balloon over the neck. Note the reading, then tip the soda in by shaking the bottle without lifting it. It fizzes and the balloon swells, yet the number on the scale stays where it was.
The fourth case shows a substitution. Take table salt, and lunar caustic, the silver salt once used to cauterise wounds. Both dissolve in water into clear solutions. Pour the two together, and at once a white solid appears and sinks: a new substance that will not dissolve.
That swallowed part of the air can be driven back out of the red oxide, and it is the gas in which a glowing splinter blazes up. It was named oxygen. The part of the air left under the bell behaved quite differently.
Then Mendeleev calls the roll. About eighty simple substances were recognised in his day, though for about six of them the knowledge was still thin, because they are so rare and had been obtained in such tiny amounts.
For chemical mechanics it is also vital to tell reversible reactions from irreversible ones. Salt dissolves in water at room temperature, and at that same temperature the solution can give the salt back as the water evaporates.
The second great condition is electricity, and its influence is much like that of heat. Most compounds that conduct an electric current are split by it, and, just as with heat, combination often happens close to the conditions of decomposition.
Examples for: a curious adult with school chemistry; add one modern instance per idea, such as a kitchen, a battery, a lab scale or a factory
The lectures retell the Russian text of the 7th edition, St Petersburg 1903 (Internet Archive 20200627_mendeleev_basic). The author died in 1907; the work is in the public domain. The retelling, the drawings and the voice are made by AI and checked against the book by a second model; nothing was edited by hand. How AI is used.
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