Claude Louis Berthollet, who argued that the elements could combine in any proportion. The existence of this debate demonstrates that, at the time, the distinction between pure
chemical compound
A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one element ...
s and
mixture
In chemistry, a mixture is a material made up of two or more different chemical substances which are not chemically bonded. A mixture is the physical combination of two or more substances in which the identities are retained and are mixed in the ...
s had not yet been fully developed.
The law of definite proportions contributed to, and was placed on a firm theoretical basis by, the
atomic theory
Atomic theory is the scientific theory that matter is composed of particles called atoms. Atomic theory traces its origins to an ancient philosophical tradition known as atomism. According to this idea, if one were to take a lump of matter ...
that
John Dalton
John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into Color blindness, colour blindness, which ...
promoted beginning in 1803, which explained matter as consisting of discrete
atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, a ...
s, that there was one type of atom for each element, and that the compounds were made of combinations of different types of atoms in fixed proportions.
[Dalton, J. (1808). ''A New System of Chemical Philosophy, volume 1'', Manchester]
Excerpt
. Accessed 2008-05-08.
A related early idea was
Prout's hypothesis
Prout's hypothesis was an early 19th-century attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements through a hypothesis regarding the internal structure of the atom. In 1815 and 1816, the English chemist William Prout published two p ...
, formulated by English chemist
William Prout, who proposed that the hydrogen atom was the fundamental atomic unit. From this hypothesis was derived the
whole number rule, which was the rule of thumb that atomic masses were whole number multiples of the mass of hydrogen. This was later rejected in the 1820s and 30s following more refined measurements of atomic mass, notably by
Jöns Jacob Berzelius
Baron Jöns Jacob Berzelius (; by himself and his contemporaries named only Jacob Berzelius, 20 August 1779 – 7 August 1848) was a Swedish chemist. Berzelius is considered, along with Robert Boyle, John Dalton, and Antoine Lavoisier, to be o ...
, which revealed in particular that the atomic mass of
chlorine
Chlorine is a chemical element with the symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine i ...
was 35.45, which was incompatible with the hypothesis. Since the 1920s this discrepancy has been explained by the presence of isotopes; the atomic mass of any isotope is very close to satisfying the whole number rule,
with the
mass defect
Nuclear binding energy in experimental physics is the minimum energy that is required to disassemble the nucleus of an atom into its constituent protons and neutrons, known collectively as nucleons. The binding energy for stable nuclei is alway ...
caused by differing
binding energies being significantly smaller.
Non-stoichiometric compounds/Isotopes
Although very useful in the foundation of modern chemistry, the law of definite proportions is not universally true. There exist
non-stoichiometric compound
In chemistry, non-stoichiometric compounds are chemical compounds, almost always solid inorganic compounds, having elemental composition whose proportions cannot be represented by a ratio of small natural numbers (i.e. an empirical formula); m ...
s whose elemental composition can vary from sample to sample. Such compounds follow the law of multiple proportion. An example is the
iron oxide
Iron oxides are chemical compounds composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. All are black magnetic solids. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of wh ...
wüstite
Wüstite ( Fe O) is a mineral form of iron(II) oxide found with meteorites and native iron. It has a grey colour with a greenish tint in reflected light. Wüstite crystallizes in the isometric-hexoctahedral crystal system in opaque to translu ...
, which can contain between 0.83 and 0.95 iron atoms for every oxygen atom, and thus contain anywhere between 23% and 25% oxygen by mass. The ideal formula is FeO, but due to crystallographic vacancies it is about Fe
0.95O. In general, Proust's measurements were not precise enough to detect such variations.
In addition, the
isotopic composition of an element can vary depending on its source, hence its contribution to the mass of even a pure stoichiometric compound may vary. This variation is used in
radiometric dating
Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares ...
since
astronomical
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxi ...
,
atmospheric
An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A ...
,
ocean
The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wor ...
ic,
crustal and deep
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...
processes may concentrate some
environmental isotopes preferentially. With the exception of
hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-to ...
and its isotopes, the effect is usually small, but is measurable with modern-day instrumentation.
Many natural
polymer
A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + '' -mer'', "part")
is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...
s vary in composition (for instance
DNA,
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, res ...
s,
carbohydrate
In organic chemistry, a carbohydrate () is a biomolecule consisting of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) atoms, usually with a hydrogen–oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 (as in water) and thus with the empirical formula (where ''m'' may o ...
s) even when "pure". Polymers are generally not considered "pure chemical compounds" except when their molecular weight is uniform (mono-disperse) and their stoichiometry is constant. In this unusual case, they still may violate the law due to isotopic variations.
References
{{reflist
Amount of substance
Stoichiometry
Chemical formulas