John Dalton Facts
John Dalton Facts
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| Interesting John Dalton Facts: |
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| As a Quaker, also designated as a Dissenter in England, Dalton was not allowed to attend or hold a university position. He taught instead at a school his brother founded for Quaker students in Kendal. |
| He went on to be named a mathematics and philosophy teacher at the New College in Manchester. |
| When the college fell into financial problems, Dalton became a private tutor in Manchester. |
| It was discovered in 1995 that Dalton actually had a very rare form of colorblindness, a fact that Dalton himself studied in great detail and published on many times. He was one of the first to theorize that colorblindness was a genetic feature, as his brother was also colorblind. |
| Due to Dalton's rare form of colorblindness, he was only able to see one color, yellow. |
| Dalton was also very influential in the study of meteorology, and many of his ideas were not altered until the invention of the airplane and weather balloons. |
| His work in meteorology, specifically barometric pressure, then led to his publication of a series of papers called Experimental Essays in which he discussed the make up of mixed gases. |
| He also researched and wrote on the constitution of steam at different temperatures, specifically its atmospheric pressure. |
| Dalton also included his findings based on research in evaporation of liquids and thermal expansion. |
| In 1803, he theorized what has now become known as Dalton's Law: essentially it states that the total pressure of combined gases is equal to the partial pressures of each of those gases separately. |
| Dalton's research had a tremendous impact on atomic theory, as his work on the physical properties of different gases required there to be a physical structure to atoms. |
| From his understanding of atoms, Dalton also published a listing of atomic weights for six different elements: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and phosphorous. |
| His work led him to conclude that chemical combinations happen between particles of different atomic weights, a groundbreaking concept that outshone the assumptions of many of the ancient Greeks. |
| Dalton's interpretation of atomic theory maintained that atoms are combined in chemical reactions, but also that they can be separated and rearranged. |
| However, Dalton concluded that the atoms themselves could not be separated or created. |
| Different elements' atoms can combine in set ratios to produce new compounds. |
| One of his most important contributions is also his work on the principles of volumetric analysis. |
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