The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements

Episode 1

Out of Thin Air

Wed, Aug 19, 201554 mins

One of science's great odd couples--British minister Joseph Priestley and French tax administrator Antoine Lavoisier--together discover a fantastic new gas called oxygen, overturning the reigning theory of chemistry and triggering a worldwide search for new elements. Soon caught up in the hunt is science's first great showman, a precocious British chemist named Humphry Davy, who dazzles London audiences with his lectures, introduces them to laughing gas, and turns the battery into a powerful tool in the search for new elements.