Coloured glass

Colour in glass may be obtained by addition of coloring ions that are homogeneously distributed and by precipitation of finely dispersed particles (such as in photochromic glasses).[6] Ordinary soda-lime glass appears colorless to the naked eye when it is thin, although iron(II) oxide (FeO) impurities of up to 0.1 wt%[27] produce a green tint which can be viewed in thick pieces or with the aid of scientific instruments. Further FeO and Cr2O3 additions may be used for the production of green bottles. Sulfur, together with carbon and iron salts, is used to form iron polysulfides and produce amber glass ranging from yellowish to almost black.[38] Manganese dioxide can be added in small amounts to remove the green tint given by iron(II) oxide.

Wikipedia



John Dalton's Vision of Colours

In 1794, shortly after his arrival in Manchester, Dalton was elected a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, the "Lit & Phil", and a few weeks later he communicated his first paper on "Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours", in which he postulated that shortage in colour perception was caused by discolouration of the liquid medium of the eyeball. In fact, a shortage of colour perception in some people had not even been formally described or officially noticed until Dalton wrote about his own. Although Dalton's theory lost credence in his own lifetime, the thorough and methodical nature of his research into his own visual problem was so broadly recognized that Daltonism became a common term for colour blindness. Examination of his preserved eyeball in 1995 demonstrated that Dalton actually had a less common kind of colour blindness, deuteroanopia, in which medium wavelength sensitive cones are missing (rather than functioning with a mutated form of their pigment, as in the most common type of colour blindness, deuteroanomaly). Besides the blue and purple of the spectrum he was able to recognize only one colour, yellow, or, as he says in his paper,

that part of the image which others call red appears to me little more than a shade or defect of light. After that the orange, yellow and green seem one colour which descends pretty uniformly from an intense to a rare yellow, making what I should call different shades of yellow.

This paper was followed by many others on diverse topics on rain and dew and the origin of springs, on heat, the colour of the sky, steam, the auxiliary verbs and participles of the English language and the reflection and refraction of light.



Valency bonds (Combining power)

In chemistry, valence bond theory is one of two basic theories, along with molecular orbital theory, that developed to use the methods of quantum mechanics to explain chemical bonding. It focuses on how the atomic orbitals of the dissociated atoms combine on molecular formation to give individual chemical bonds. In contrast, molecular orbital theory has orbitals that cover the whole molecule.[1]

In 1916, G.N. Lewis proposed that a chemical bond forms by the interaction of two shared bonding electrons, with the representation of molecules as Lewis structures. In 1927 the Heitler-London theory was formulated which for the first time enabled the calculation of bonding properties of the hydrogen molecule H2 based on quantum mechanical considerations. Specifically, Walter Heitler determined how to use Schrödinger’s wave equation (1925) to show how two hydrogen atom wavefunctions join together, with plus, minus, and exchange terms, to form a covalent bond. He then called up his associate Fritz London and they worked out the details of the theory over the course of the night.[2] Later, Linus Pauling used the pair bonding ideas of Lewis together with Heitler-London theory to develop two other key concepts in VB theory: resonance (1928) and orbital hybridization (1930). According to Charles Coulson, author of the noted 1952 book Valence, this period marks the start of “modern valence bond theory”, as contrasted with older valence bond theories, which are essentially electronic theories of valence couched in pre-wave-mechanical terms.


....The exact inception, however, of the theory of chemical valencies can be traced to an 1852 paper by Edward Frankland, in which he combined the older theories of free radicals and “type theory” with thoughts on chemical affinity to show that certain elements have the tendency to combine with other elements to form compounds containing 3, i.e. in the three atom groups (e.g. NO3, NH3, NI3, etc.) or 5, i.e. in the five atom groups (e.g. NO5, NH4O, PO5, etc.), equivalents of the attached elements. It is in this manner, according to Franklin, that their affinities are best satisfied. Following these examples and postulates, Franklin declares how obvious it is that:[3]
“ A tendency or law prevails (here), and that, no matter what the characters of the uniting atoms may be, the combining power of the attracting element, if I may be allowed the term, is always satisfied by the same number of these atoms. ”

This “combining power” was afterwards called quantivalence or valency (and valence by American chemists).


1- Murrel, J. N.; S. F. Tedder (1985). The Chemical Bond. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-90759-6.
2- Partington, J.R. (1989). A Short History of Chemistry. Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-65977-1.
3- Franklin, E. (1852). Phil. Trans., vol. cxlii, 417.