Lesson 7's Enrich: Synthesis Of Urea

The topic I chose for Lesson 7’s Enrich was Synthesis of Urea. The discovery revolves around Friedrich Wöhler, a German chemist from the 1800’s. Dr. Wöhler was alive in a period where chemistry was separated into two different areas; Organic Compounds and Inorganic Compounds. At the time, Organic compounds (chemicals generally derived from plants or animals) were viewed as less stable, and formulas were difficult to ascertain from elemental analysis. Whereas, Inorganic Compounds were easier to “deal with” scientifically. Inorganic Compounds followed the laws of chemistry and were easy to synthesize and analyze. (Ramberg, 2000) Dr. Wöhler was trying to synthesize ammonium cyanate by using silver cyanate and aqueous ammonium chloride, his product was a crystalline powder that didn’t possess the properties of ammonium cyanate. He tried again, only this time he used lead cyanate and ammonium hydroxide. The product of this treatment turned out to be urea! Urea is an organic compound, normally isolated

I’m sure that a lot of discovery that happens in science is incidental, and comes only from simple curiosity. To measure significance, not only did Dr. Wöhler unify chemistry, but this was the birth of what we know today as Organic Chemistry. Organic Chemistry has great influence in life and has applications in rubber, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, etc. Needless to say, this was a pretty important discovery. Wöhler was also testing a theory of another scientist, Justus von Liebig, who came up with a formula that was similar to a completely different compound. At that time, Isomerism (belief that each compound has a unique formula) was held. Wöhler’s experiment was influenced by von Liebig’s theory, because he was trying to do find a formula for two differing compounds, which resulted in synthesis of