Entries with tag "theories"

According to the the generally accepted scientific understanding of the 18th century, all combustion was attributable to phlogiston, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, massless substance. At the time, the scientific community believed that all flammable materials contained a certain amount of phlogiston. The act of burning the materials was in fact merely releasing the phlogiston into the air. Once burned, the materials were held to be in their "true" form, the 'calx'. Thus the act of burning was known as 'dephlogisticating' a substance.

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