Samuel Parkes (chemist)
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
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manufacturing chemist
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
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He published manuals of chemistry between 1806 and 1815.
His work of popular science, the Chemical Catechism, includes poetical descriptions of chemical processes. Here is his description of plant respiration
Respiration (physiology)
'In physiology, respiration is defined as the transport of oxygen from the outside air to the cells within tissues, and the transport of carbon dioxide in the opposite direction...
:
- Thus while the vegetable tribes inhale
- The limpid water from the parent vale,
- Their veget
- To blend it with the carbon of the soil,
- And form bitumen, resin, wax, or oil:,
- The free'd caloric bursts the expanding mass,
- And swells the nascent oxygen to gas;
- Which, from its inmost cells, each leaflet pours
- In viral currents through its myriad pores,
- To renovate the air, by tempests hurl'd
- From pole to pole, around a freshen'd world.