Combustion chamber,oil; after Lavoisier

This instrument is a combustion chamber for oil and it was designed by the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. In the stoppered glass flask is an oil lamp. Through the various tubes, oxygen and oil can be added, and the combustion products can be carried off for further examination. Lavoisier showed that combustion is a process in which a substance reacts with oxygen. After that, he studied different combustion products systematically. Thus he tried to support his hypothesis that the total mass of all substances involved in combustion stays the same. This way, he could furthermore determine whether a certain substance consisted of a simple substance or of several substances. For example, the combustion of oil releases carbon dioxide and water. These combustion products have a mass that is equal to the mass of the combusted oil and oxygen. Later on, Martinus van Marum made his own, improved version of this combustion chamber.