Graham's law has come to denote an important class of finely divided materials. Around the time Graham did his work, the concept of molecular weight was being established largely through the measurements of gases. Daniel Bernoulli suggested in 1738 in his book Hydrodynamica that heat increases in proportion to the velocity, and thus kinetic energy, of gas particles. Italian physicist Amedeo Avogadro also suggested in 1811 that equal volumes of different gases contain equal numbers of molecules. Thus, the relative molecular weights of two gases are equal to the ratio of weights of equal volumes of the gases. Avogadro's insight together with
History of molecular theory contain the same number of molecules". This law implies that the relationship occurring between the weights of same volumes of different gases, at the same temperature and pressure, corresponds to the relationship between respective molecular weights. Hence, relative molecular masses could now be calculated from the masses of gas samples. Avogadro developed this hypothesis in order to reconcile Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac's 1808 law on volumes and combining gases with Dalton's 1803 atomic theory. The greatest difficulty Avogadro had to resolve was the huge confusion at that time regarding atoms and molecules—one of the most important contributions of Avogadro's work was