Svante Arrhenius Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Svante Arrhenius

Born	(1859-02-19)19 February 1859 Vik, Sweden
Died	2 October 1927(1927-10-02) (aged 68) Stockholm, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Education	Uppsala University Stockholm University
Known for	Arrhenius equation Theory of ionic dissociation Acid-base theory
Awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1903) Franklin Medal (1920)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics, chemistry
Institutions	Royal Institute of Technology

Svante August Arrhenius (born February 19, 1859 – died October 2, 1927) was a brilliant Swedish scientist who won a Nobel Prize. He made important discoveries in physics, chemistry, and even about our Earth.

Even though he started as a physicist, he won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He also helped create a new field called physical chemistry, which mixes ideas from both physics and chemistry. Later, he explored other scientific puzzles. He was actually the first person to suggest that carbon dioxide (CO2) released from burning things like fossil fuels could make our planet warmer, a process we now call global warming.

How Electricity Moves in Liquids
- Ions: Tiny Charged Particles
- Acids and Bases
Arrhenius and the Nobel Prize
Later Discoveries
Images for kids
See also

How Electricity Moves in Liquids

Svante Arrhenius's early work was about how well certain liquids, called electrolytes, could carry electricity. In 1884, he wrote a long paper about this for his doctorate degree at Uppsala University.

His professors weren't very impressed at first, and he got a low grade. But later, the ideas from this very paper helped him win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

Ions: Tiny Charged Particles

The most important idea in Arrhenius's paper was his explanation for why pure salts or pure water don't conduct electricity well, but salt dissolved in water does.

Arrhenius explained that when salt dissolves in water, it breaks apart into tiny charged particles. Another scientist, Michael Faraday, had already called these particles ions many years before. Faraday thought ions were only made when electricity was flowing. But Arrhenius had a new idea: he said that even without an electric current, solutions of salts already contained these ions. He also suggested that many chemical reactions in solutions actually happen between these ions.

Acids and Bases

Building on his idea about ions, Arrhenius also came up with definitions for acids and bases in 1884. He believed that acids are substances that release hydrogen ions when dissolved in a solution. He said that bases are substances that release hydroxide ions when dissolved in a solution.

Arrhenius and the Nobel Prize

Around the year 1900, Arrhenius became very involved in setting up the Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Institutes. For the rest of his life, he was a member of both the Nobel Committee for Physics and the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. In 1903, he became the first Swedish person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on how electricity moves through liquids.

Later Discoveries

After becoming famous for his early work, Arrhenius started looking into other scientific questions.

Earth and Space Science

He also became interested in geology, which is the study of Earth. He explored ideas about how ice ages might have started. He also studied astronomy, which is the study of space, and astrophysics, which combines physics with astronomy. He even thought about how our Solar System might have formed from collisions in space.

Arrhenius also considered how radiation pressure might explain things like comets, the solar corona (the sun's outer atmosphere), the aurora borealis (the northern lights), and zodiacal light. He even had a theory that life might have traveled from one planet to another through tiny spores. This idea is now known as panspermia.

The Greenhouse Effect

Arrhenius developed a theory to explain ice ages. In 1896, he was the first scientist to suggest that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could greatly affect Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. He was influenced by the work of other scientists, like Joseph Fourier. Arrhenius used observations of the moon's infrared light to figure out how much infrared radiation is absorbed by CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere.

He wrote a simplified rule for his greenhouse theory: "If the amount of carbonic acid (carbon dioxide) increases by a certain factor, the temperature will increase by a nearly equal amount."

His book Worlds in the Making (1908) was written for everyone, not just scientists. In it, he suggested that the CO2 released by humans would be enough to stop the world from entering a new ice age. He even thought a warmer Earth would be good for feeding the world's growing population.

Here are some of his thoughts from that book:

"The temperature of the earth's surface... is related to the atmosphere surrounding it, especially by how well the atmosphere lets heat rays pass through."
"This theory has been called the hot-house theory, because they thought that the atmosphere acted like the glass panes of hot-houses."
"If the amount of carbon dioxide in the air were cut in half, the temperature would drop by about 4 degrees Celsius. If it were cut to one-quarter, the temperature would drop by 8 degrees. On the other hand, if the carbon dioxide in the air doubled, the Earth's surface temperature would rise by 4 degrees. If it increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8 degrees."
"Even though the sea absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide, we can still see that the small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might change noticeably over a few centuries because of industry."
"With more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we can hope for ages with more balanced and better climates, especially in the colder parts of the Earth. These would be ages when the Earth produces much more food for a rapidly growing human population."

Arrhenius was the first to predict that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels would cause global warming. He believed a warmer world would be a good thing. However, until about 1960, most scientists didn't think the greenhouse effect was likely to happen. Another scientist, Milutin Milanković, had proposed a different idea for ice ages based on changes in Earth's orbit. Today, scientists believe that these orbital changes set the timing for ice ages, with CO2 acting as a way to make the changes even bigger.

Ideas About Human Society

Arrhenius also thought about the idea of a universal language, which is one language that everyone in the world would speak. He suggested making some changes to the English language for this purpose.