John Gough (natural philosopher) wife and seven of their children. He was buried in the parish churchyard of Kendal. Gough had wide-ranging scientific interests. He published papers in natural history, mechanics, mathematics, chemistry, and experimental physics. One of his most interesting pieces of work was an investigation into the properties of natural rubber or Caoutchouc. He was the first to describe the heat released when a rubber band is quickly stretched, the heat being detected by the lips to which the band is pressed. When stretched rubber is heated, it contracts, a reversal of the normal behaviour of materials when heated. Gough published these
Amount of substance especially the early metallurgists, probably had some notion of amount of substance, but there are no surviving records of any generalization of the idea beyond a set of recipes. In 1758, Mikhail Lomonosov questioned the idea that mass was the only measure of the quantity of matter, but he did so only in relation to his theories on gravitation. The development of the concept of amount of substance was coincidental with, and vital to, the birth of modern chemistry. Amount of substance Amount of substance is a standard-defined quantity that measures the size of an ensemble of particles, such as