Hantzsch (Ber., 1901, 34, p. 3337) has shown that in the action of alcohols on diazonium salts an increase in the molecular weight of the alcohol and an accumulation of negative groups in the aromatic nucleus lead to a diminution in the yield of the ether produced and to the production of a secondary reaction, resulting in the formation of a certain amount of an aromatic hydrocarbon.
Gerhardt found that reactions could be best followed if one assumed the molecular weight of an element or compound to be that weight which occupied the same volume as two unit weights of hydrogen, and this assumption led him to double the equivalents accepted by Gmelin, making H= 1, 0 =16, and C = 12, thereby agreeing with Berzelius, and also to halve the values given by Berzelius to many metals.
From a study of the free elements Cannizzaro showed that an element may have more than one molecular weight; for example, the molecular weight of sulphur varied with the temperature.
This view was modified by Liebig, who regarded ether as ethyl oxide, and alcohol as the hydrate of ethyl oxide; here, however, he was in error, for he attributed to alcohol a molecular weight double its true value.
Kopp, begun in 1842, on the molecular volumes, the volume occupied by one gramme molecular weight of a substance, of liquids measured at their boiling-point under atmospheric pressure, brought to light a series of additive relations which, in the case of carbon compounds, render it possible to predict, in some measure, the cornposition of the substance.
