Alchemy is the very old study andphilosophy of how to change basic substances (such as metals) into other substances. It also studied how substances (and how they are changed into other substances) were related tomagic andastrology. People who studied alchemy were calledalchemists. Some things alchemists tried to do werechangelead ormercury intogold, make thephilosopher's stone, and make the "elixir of life," which they thought could cure (make better) any disease and make someone young again.
Alchemists believed that substances, mind, philosophies,religion, magic, and astrology were related to each other. They tried to find connections between them. They tried to understand one by understanding the other. Some alchemists used metals (like gold or silver) to representspiritual oroccult ideas. People in many different countries studied alchemy.
In the 1600s and 1700s, people started to study only the properties of substances without trying to relate them to secret, old knowledge. They didexperiments and wrote down what they discovered so other people could learn from them. One of the important people who did these experiments wasRobert Boyle. People called the new study of substanceschemistry.
Scientists have since discovered how to change one kind ofelement (the simplest kind of chemical substance) into another. In 1980, an American scientist namedGlenn Seaborg discovered how to change a very tiny amount ofbismuth into gold with anuclear reactor.[1] Making gold this way is much more difficult and expensive (costs a lot of money) thanmining orrecycling it.
