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.