How Chemists Discovered That Water is a Chemical Compound Rather Than an Element
Ever Salazar of MinuteEarth explained how scientists in the late 18th Century dispelled the long-held notion that water was an element by conducting certain experiments that proved instead, that water is a chemical compound made up of two hydrogen atoms and a single oxygen atom or H2O.
For thousands of years, water was thought to be an element. That is, until some of the greatest chemists in the world managed to crack it open.