  Section 46. What things are made of: Elements.
One of the most natural questions in the world is, "What is this made of?" If we are talking about a piece of bread, the answer is, of course, "flour, water, milk, shortening, sugar, salt, and yeast." But what is each of these made of? Flour is made of wheat, and the wheat is made of materials that the plant gets from the earth, water, and air. Then what are the earth, water, and air made of? A chemist is a person who can answer these questions and who can tell what almost everything is made of. And a strange thing that chemists have found out is this: Everything in the world is made out of one or more of about eighty-five simple substances called elements. What an element is. An element is a substance that is not made of anything else but itself. Gold is one of the eighty-five elements; there are no other substances known to man that you can put together to make gold. It is made of gold and that is all. There is a theory that maybe all the elements are made of electrons in different arrangements, or of electrons and one other thing; but we do not know that, it is only a theory. Carbon is another element; pure charcoal is carbon. The part of the air that we use when we breathe or when we burn things is called oxygen. Oxygen is an element; it is not made of anything but itself. There is another For a long time people thought that water was an element. Water certainly looks and seems as if it were made only of itself. Yet during the thousands of years that people believed water was an element, they were daily putting two elements together and making water out of them. When you put a kettle, or anything cold, over a fire, tiny drops of water always form on it. These are not drops of water that were dissolved in the air, and that condense on the sides of the cold kettle; if they were, they would gather on the kettle better in the open air than over the hot fire. Really there is some of that very light gas, hydrogen, in the wood or coal or gas that you use, and this hydrogen joins the oxygen in the air to make water whenever we burn ordinary fuel. But the best way to prove that water is made of two gases is to take the water apart and get the gases from it. Here are the directions for doing this:
Only oxygen will make charcoal burst into flame like this. When people found that they could take water apart in this way and turn it into hydrogen and oxygen, and when they found that whenever they combined hydrogen with oxygen they got water, they knew, of course, that water was not an element. Maybe some day they will find that some of the eighty-five or so substances that we now consider elements can really be divided into two or more elements; but so far the elements we know show no signs of being made of anything except themselves. The last section of this book will explain something about the way the chemist goes to work to find out what elements are hidden in compounds. Fig. 161. Fig. 161. Water can be separated into two gases by a current of electricity.The quick way chemists write about elements. Since everything in the world is made of a combination or a mixture of elements, chemists have found it very convenient to make abbreviations for the names of the elements so that they can quickly write what a thing is made of. They indicate hydrogen by the letter H. O always means oxygen to the chemist; C means carbon; and Cl means chlorine, the poison gas so much used in the World War. The abbreviation stands for the Latin name of the element instead of for the English name, but they are often almost alike. The Latin name for the metal sodium, however, is natrum, and chemists always write Na when they mean sodium; this is fortunate, because S already stands for the element sulfur. Fe means iron (Latin, ferrum). But I stands for the When a chemist wants to show that water is made of hydrogen two parts and oxygen one part, he writes it very quickly like this: H2O (pronounced "H two O"). "H2O" means to a chemist just as much as "w-a-t-e-r" means to you; and it means even more, because it tells that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. If a chemist wanted to write, "You can take water apart and it will give you two parts of hydrogen and also one part of oxygen," this is what he would put down: H2O -> 2H+O. If he wanted to show that you could combine two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen to form water, he would write it quickly like this: 2H+O -> H2O. These are called chemical equations. You do not need to remember them; they are put here merely so that you will know what they look like. Some of them are much longer and more complicated, like this: HC2H3O2+NaHCO3 -> H2O+CO2+NaC2H3O2. This is the chemist's way of saying, "Vinegar is made of one part of hydrogen gas that will come off easily and that gives it its sour taste, two parts of carbon, three parts of hydrogen that does not come off so easily, Some elements you already know. Here is a list of some elements that you are already pretty well acquainted with. The abbreviation is put after the name for each. This list is only for reference and need not be learned.
For the rest of the elements you can refer to any textbook on chemistry. How elements hide in compounds. One strange thing about an element is that it can hide so completely, by combining with another element, that you would never know it was present unless you took the combination apart. Take the black element carbon, for instance. Sugar is made entirely of carbon and water. You can tell this by making sugar very hot. When it is hot enough, it turns black; the water part is driven off and the carbon is left behind. Yet to look at dry, white sugar, or to taste its sweetness, one would never suspect that it was made of pure black, tasteless carbon and colorless, tasteless water. Mixing carbon and water would never give you sugar. But combining them in the right proportions into a chemical compound does produce sugar. Not only is carbon concealed in sugar, but it is present in all plant and animal matter. That is why burning almost any kind of food makes it black. You drive off most of the other elements and separate the food into its parts by getting it too hot; the water evaporates Making hydrogen come out of hiding. The light gas, hydrogen, conceals itself as perfectly as carbon does by combining with other elements. It is hiding in everything that is sour and in many things that are not sour. And you can get it out of sour things with metals. In some cases it is harder to separate than in others; and some metals separate it better than others do. But one sour compound that you can easily get the hydrogen out of is hydrochloric acid (HCl), which is hydrogen combined with the poison gas, chlorine. One of the best metals to get the hydrogen out with is zinc. Here are the directions for doing it and incidentally for making a toy balloon:
If the bubbles do not form rapidly, ask the teacher to pour a little strong hydrochloric acid into the flask; but this will probably not be necessary. Let the balloon keep filling until it is as large as you blew it. But if the bubbles stop coming before it gets as large as that, close the neck of the balloon by pinching it tightly, and take the stopper out. Let some one add more zinc shavings and more acid to the flask; put the stopper back in, and stop pinching the neck of the balloon. In this and all other experiments when you use strong acids, pour the used acids into the crockery jar that is provided for such wastes. Do not pour them into the sink, as acids ruin sink drainpipes. When the balloon is full, close the neck by slipping the rubber band up from the part of the neck that is over the glass tube on to the upper part of the neck. Pull the balloon Here is another experiment with hydrogen:
Remember that the hydrogen which the zinc is driving out of the acid is exactly the same as the hydrogen you drove out of water with an electric current. There is a metal called sodium (Na) and another called potassium (K) which are as soft as stiff putty and as shiny as silver; if you put a tiny piece of sodium (Na) or potassium (K) on water, it will drive the hydrogen out of the water just as zinc drove it out of the acid. The action is so swift and violent and releases so much heat that the hydrogen which is set free catches fire. This makes it look as if the metal were burning as it sputters around on top of the water. There is so much sputtering that the experiment is dangerous; people have been blinded by the hot alkaline water spattering into their eyes. So you cannot try this until sometime when you take a regular course in chemistry. Fig. 164. Fig. 164. Trying to see if hydrogen will burn.Getting oxygen, a gas, from two solids. Oxygen (O) can hide just as successfully as hydrogen. Practically all elements can do the same by combining with others. Here is an experiment in which you can get the gas, oxygen, out of a couple of solids. If you went to the moon or some other place where there is no air, you could carry oxygen very conveniently locked up in these solid substances. Oxygen, you remember, is the part of the air that keeps us alive when we breathe it.
Both manganese dioxid and potassium chlorate have a great deal of oxygen bound up in them. When they join together, as they do when you heat them, they cannot hold so much oxygen, and it escapes as a gas. In the experiment, the escaping oxygen passed through the tube, filled the bottle, and forced the water out. What burning is. When anything burns, it is simply joining oxygen. When a thing burns in air, it cannot join the oxygen of the air very fast, for every quart of oxygen in the air is diluted with a gallon of a gas called nitrogen. Nitrogen will not burn and it will not help anything else to burn. But when you have pure oxygen, as in the bottle, the particles of wood or charcoal or picture wire can join it easily; so there is a very bright blaze. Although free oxygen helps things to burn so brilliantly, a match applied to the solids from which you got it would go out. And while hydrogen burns very easily, you cannot burn water although it is two-thirds hydrogen. Water is H2O, you remember. What compounds are. When elements are combined with other elements, the new substances that are formed are called compounds. Water (H2O) is a compound, because it is made of hydrogen and oxygen combined. When elements unite to form compounds, they lose their original qualities. The oxygen in water will not let things burn in it; the hydrogen in water will not burn. Salt (NaCl) is a compound. It is made of the soft metal sodium (Na), which when placed on water Mixtures. But sometimes elements can be mixed without their combining to form compounds, in such a way that they keep most of their original properties. Air is a mixture. It is made of oxygen (O) and nitrogen (N). If they were combined, instead of mixed, they might form laughing gas,—the gas dentists use in putting people to sleep when they pull teeth. So it is well for us that air is only a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, and not a compound. You found that things burned brilliantly in oxygen. Well, things burn in air too, because a fifth of the air is oxygen and the oxygen of the air has all its original properties left. Things do not burn as brightly in air as they do in pure oxygen for the same reason that a teaspoonful of sugar mixed with 4 teaspoonfuls of boiled rice does not taste as sweet as pure sugar. The sugar itself is as sweet, but it is not as concentrated. Likewise the oxygen in the air is as able to help things burn as pure oxygen is; but it is diluted with four times its own volume of nitrogen. A solution is a mixture, too; for although substances disappear when they dissolve, they keep their own properties. Sugar is sweet whether it is dissolved or not. Salt dissolved in water makes brine; but the water will act in the way that it did before. It will still help to make iron rust; and salt will be salty, whether or not it is dissolved in water. That is why Everything in the world is made of atoms. Everything in the world is either an element or a compound or a mixture. Most plant and animal matter is made of very complicated compounds, or mixtures of compounds. All pure metals are elements; but metals, when they are melted, can be dissolved in each other to form alloys, which really are mixtures. Most of the so-called gold and silver and nickel articles are really made of alloys; that is, the gold, silver, or nickel has some other elements dissolved in it to make it harder, or to impart some other quality. Bronze and brass are always alloys; steel is generally an alloy made chiefly of iron but with other elements such as tungsten, of which electric lamp filaments are made, dissolved in it to make it harder. An alloy is a special kind of solution not quite like an ordinary solution. You remember that in the opening chapters we often spoke of molecules, the tiny particles of matter that are always moving rapidly back and forth. Well, if you were to examine a molecule of water with the microscope which we imagined could show us molecules, you would find that the molecule of water was made of three still smaller particles, called atoms. Two of these would be atoms of hydrogen and would probably be especially small; the third would be larger and would be an oxygen atom. In the same way if you looked at a molecule of salt under this imaginary microscope, you would probably find it made of two atoms, one of sodium (Na) and one The smallest particle of an element is called an atom. The smallest particle of a compound is called a molecule. Molecules are usually made of two or more atoms joined together.
Inference Exercise
Section 47. Burning: Oxidation.
If oxygen should suddenly lose its power of combining with other things to form compounds, every fire in the world would go out at once. You could go on breathing at first, but your breathing would be useless. You would shiver, begin to struggle, and death would come, all within a minute or two. Plants and trees would die, but they would remain standing until blown down by the wind. Even the fish in the water would all die in a few minutes,—more quickly than they usually do when we take them out of the water. In a very short time everything in the world would be dead. Then suppose that this condition lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years, the oxygen remaining unable to combine with other elements. During all that time nothing would decay. The trees would stay as they fell. The corpses of people would dry and shrivel, but they would lie where they dropped as perfectly preserved as the best of mummies. The dead fish would float about in the oceans and lakes. This is all because life is kept up by burning. And burning is simply the combining of different things with oxygen. If oxygen ceased to combine with the wood or gas or whatever fuel you use, that fuel could not burn; how could it when "burning" means combining with oxygen? The heat in your body and the energy with The reason things would not decay is that decay usually is a slow kind of oxidation (burning). When it is not this, it is the action of bacteria. But bacteria themselves could not live if they had no oxygen; so they could not make things decay. Not only would the dead plants and animals remain in good condition, but the clothes people were wearing when they dropped dead would stay unfaded and bright colored through all the storms and sunshine. And the iron poles and car tracks and window bars would remain unrusted. For bleaching and rusting are slow kinds of oxidation or burning (combining with oxygen). Here are two experiments which show that you cannot make things burn unless you have oxygen to combine with them:
The bubbles that came out for a few seconds at the beginning of the experiment were caused by the air in the bottle being heated and expanded by the flame. Soon, however, the oxygen in the air was used so fast that it made up for this expansion, and the bubbles stopped going out. When practically all the oxygen was used, the flame went out. The candle is made mostly of a combination of hydrogen and carbon. The hydrogen combines with part of the oxygen in the air that is in the bottle to form a little water. The carbon combines with the rest of the oxygen to make carbon dioxid, much of which dissolves in the water below. So there is practically empty space in the bottle where the oxygen was, and the air outside forces the water up into this space. The rest of the bottle is filled with the nitrogen that was in the air and that has remained unchanged. About how much of the air was oxygen is indicated by the space that the water filled after the oxygen was combined with the candle. Fig. 167. Fig. 167. The water rises in the bottle after the burning candle uses up the oxygen.Carbon and hydrogen the chief elements in fuel. Carbon and hydrogen make up the larger part of almost every substance that is used for fuel, including gas, gasoline, wood, and soft coal; alcohol, crude oil, kerosene, paper, peat, and the acetylene used in automobile and bicycle lamps. Hard coal, coke, and charcoal are, however, chiefly plain carbon. Since burning is simply the combining of things with oxygen, it is plain that when the carbon of fuel joins oxygen we shall get carbon dioxid (CO2). When the hydrogen in the fuel joins oxygen, what must we get? When things do not burn up completely, the carbon may be left behind as charcoal. That is what happens when food "burns" on the stove. But if anything burns up entirely, the carbon or charcoal burns too, passing off as the invisible gas, carbon dioxid, just as the hydrogen burns to form steam or water. It is because almost every fuel forms water when it burns, that we find drops of water gathering on the outside of a cold kettle or cold flatiron if either is put directly over a flame. The hydrogen in the fuel combines with the oxygen of the air to form steam. As the steam strikes the cold kettle or iron, it condenses and forms drops of water. Nothing ever destroyed. One important result of the discovery that burning is only a combining of oxygen with the fuel was that people began to see that nothing is ever destroyed. There is exactly as much carbon in the carbon dioxid that floats off from a fire as there was in the wood that was burned up; and there is exactly as much hydrogen in the water vapor that floats off from the fire as there was in the wood. Chemists have caught all the carbon dioxid and the water vapor and weighed them and added their weight to the weight of the ashes; and they have found them to weigh even more than the original piece of wood, because of the presence of the oxygen that combined with them in the burning. If everything in the world were to burn up, using the oxygen that is already here, the world would not weigh one ounce more or less than it does now. All the elements that were here before would still be here; Why water puts out a fire. Water puts out a fire because it will not let enough free oxygen get to the wood, or whatever is burning, to combine with it. The oxygen that is locked up in a compound, like water, you remember, has lost its ability to combine with other things. Sand puts out a fire in the same way that water does. Most fire extinguishers make a foam of carbon dioxid (CO2) which covers the burning material and keeps the free oxygen in the air from coming near enough to combine with it. Water will not put out burning oil, however, as the oil floats up on top of the water and still combines with the oxygen in the air. Why electric lamps are usually vacuums. Electric lamps usually have vacuums inside because the filament gets so hot that it would burn up if there were any oxygen to combine with it. But in a globe containing no oxygen the filament may be made ever so hot and it cannot possibly burn. High-power electric lamps are not made with vacuums but are "gas-filled." The gas that is oftenest put into lamps is nitrogen,—the same gas that is mixed with the oxygen in air. By taking all the oxygen out of a quantity of air, the lamp manufacturers can use in perfect safety the nitrogen that is left. It will not combine with the glowing filament. There is no oxygen What flames are. When you look at a flame, it seems as if fire were a real thing and not merely a process of combining something with oxygen. The flame is a real thing. It is made up of hot gases, rising from the hot fuel, and it is usually filled with tiny glowing particles of carbon. When you burn a piece of wood, the heat partly separates its elements, just as heating sugar separates the carbon from the water. Some of the hydrogen gas in the wood and some of the carbon too are separated from the wood by the heat. These are pushed up by the cooler air around and combine with the oxygen as they rise. The hydrogen combines more easily than the carbon; part of the carbon may remain behind as charcoal if your wood does not all burn up, and many of the smaller carbon particles only glow in the burning hydrogen, instead of burning. That is what makes the flame yellow. If you hold anything white over a yellow flame, it will soon be covered with black soot, which is carbon. What smoke is. Smoke consists mostly of little specks of unburned carbon. That is why it is gray or black. When you have black smoke, you may always be sure that some of the carbon particles are not combining properly with oxygen. Yellow flames are usually smoky; that is, they usually are full of unburned bits of carbon that float off above the flame. But by letting enough air in with the flame, it is possible to make all the little pieces of carbon burn (combine with the oxygen of the air) before The hottest flames are the blue flames. That is because in a blue flame all the carbon is burning up along with the hydrogen of the fuel—both are combining with the oxygen of the air as rapidly as possible. A gas or gasoline stove is so arranged that air is fed into the burner with the gas. You will see this in the following experiment:
Fig. 169. Fig. 169. Regulating the air opening in a gas stove.
Fig. 170. Fig. 170. The air openings in the front of a gas stove.Inference Exercise
Section 48. Chemical change caused by heat.
Has it struck you as strange that we do not all burn up, since burning is a combining with oxygen, and we are walking around in oxygen all the time? The only reason we do not burn up is that it usually requires heat to start a chemical change. You already know this in a practical way. You know that you have to rub the head of a match and get it hot before it will begin to burn; that gunpowder does not go off unless you heat it by the sudden blow of the gun hammer which you release when you pull the trigger; that you have to concentrate the sun's rays with a magnifying glass to make it set a piece of paper on fire; and that to change raw food into food that tastes pleasant you have to heat it. If heat did not start chemical change, you could never cook food,—partly because the fire would not burn, and partly because the food would not change its taste even if heated by electricity or concentrated sunlight. Here is an experiment to show that gas will not burn unless it gets hot enough:
The reason the screen kept the gas below it from catching fire although the gas above it was burning was Another simple experiment with the Bunsen burner, that shows the same thing in a different way, is this: Fig. 171. Fig. 171. Why doesn't the flame above the wire gauze set fire to the gas below?
Inference Exercise
Section 49. Chemical change caused by light.
If light could not help chemical change, nothing would ever fade when hung in the sun; wall paper and curtains would be as bright colored after 20 years as on the day they were put up, if they were kept clean; you would never become freckled, tanned, or sunburned; all photographers and moving-picture operators would have to go out of business; but worst of all, every green plant would immediately stop growing and would soon die. Therefore, all cows and horses and other plant-eating animals would die; and then the flesh-eating animals would have nothing to eat and they would die; and then all people would die. You will be able better to understand why all this would happen after you do the following experiments, the first of which will show that light helps the chemical change called bleaching or fading.
Bleaching is usually a very slow kind of burning. It is the dye that is oxidized (burned), not the cloth. Most dyes will combine with the oxygen in the air if they are exposed to the sunlight. The dampness quickens the action. Why some people freckle in the sun. When the sunlight falls for a long time on the skin, it often causes the cells in the under part of the skin to produce some dark coloring matter, or pigment. This dark pigment shows through the outer layer of skin, and we call the little spots of it freckles. Some people are born with these pigment spots; but when the freckles come out from long exposure to the sunlight, they are an example right in our own skins of chemical change caused by the action of light. Tan also is due to pigment in the skin and is caused by light. The next experiments with their explanations will show you how cameras can take pictures. If you are not interested in knowing how photographs are made, do the experiments and skip the explanations down to the middle of page 332.
What has happened is that the light has made the silver (Ag) separate from the chlorine (Cl) of the silver chlorid (AgCl). Chemists would write this: AgCl -> Ag + Cl. That is, silver chlorid (AgCl) has changed into silver (Ag) and chlorine (Cl). Chlorine, as you know, is a poisonous gas, and it floats off in the air, leaving the fine particles of silver behind. When silver is divided into very tiny particles, it absorbs light instead of reflecting it; so it looks dark gray or black. How photographs are made. All photography depends on this action of light. The plates or films are coated with a silver salt,—usually a more sensitive salt than silver chlorid. This is exposed to the light that shines through the lens of the camera. As you have learned, the lens brings the light from the object to a focus and makes an image on the film or plate. The light parts of this image will change the silver salt to silver; the dark parts will not change it. So wherever there is a white place on the object you are photographing, there will be a dark patch of silver Fig. 173. Fig. 173. The silver salt on the paper remains white where it was shaded by the key.As a matter of fact, the film or plate is exposed such a short time that there is not time for the change to be completed. So the photographer develops the negative; he washes it in some chemicals that finish the process which the light started. If he exposed the whole plate to the light now, however, all the unchanged parts of the silver salt would also be changed by the light, and there would be no picture left. So before he lets any light shine on it, except red light which has no effect on the silver salt, he dissolves The only trouble with the picture now is that wherever there should be a patch of white, there is a patch of dark silver particles; and wherever there should be a dark place, there is just the clear glass or celluloid, with all the silver salt dissolved off. This kind of picture is called a negative; everything is just the opposite shade from what it should be. A white man dressed in a black suit looks like a negro dressed in a white suit. How a photographic print is made. The negative not only has the lights and shadows reversed, but it is on celluloid or glass, and except for moving pictures and stereopticons, we usually want the picture on paper. So a print is made of the negative. The next experiment will show you how this is done.
In making blueprints you are changing an iron salt instead of a silver salt, by the action of light. Regular photographic prints are usually made on paper treated with a silver salt rather than with iron salt, and sometimes a gold or platinum salt is used. But these other salts have to be washed off with chemicals since they do not come off in water, as the unchanged part of the iron salt comes off when you fix the blueprint paper in the water bath. Since the light cannot get through the black part of a negative, the coating on the paper behind that part is not affected and it stays light colored; and since the light can get through the clear parts of the negative, the coating on the paper back of those parts is affected and becomes dark. Therefore, the print is "right side out,"—there is a light place on the print for every white place on the object photographed, and there is a dark place on the print for every black place on the object. Moving-picture films are printed from one film to another, just as you printed from a negative to a piece of paper. The negative is taken on one film, then this is printed on another film. The second film is "right side out." Light and the manufacture of food in plants. Much the most important chemical effect of light, however, is not in making photographs, in bleaching things, or in "burning" your skin. It is in the putting together of carbon and water to make sugar in plants. Plants get water (H2O) from the earth and carbon dioxid (CO2) from the air. When the sun shines on chlorophyll, the green substance in plants, the chlorophyll puts them together and makes sugar. The plant changes this sugar into starch and other foods, and into the tissues of the plant itself. Nothing in the world can put carbon dioxid and water together and make food out of them except certain bacteria and the chlorophyll of plants. And light is absolutely necessary for this chemical action. Try this experiment:
No plant can make food except with the help of light. The part of the plant that can put carbon dioxid and water together is the green stuff or chlorophyll, and this can work only when light is shining on it. So all plants would die without light. But if all plants should die, all animals would die also, for animals cannot make food out of carbon dioxid and water, as they do not have the chlorophyll that puts these things together. A lion does not live on leaves, it is true, but he lives on deer and other animals that do live on leaves and plants. If the plants died, all plant-eating animals would die. Then there would be nothing for the flesh-eating animals to eat except each other, and in time no animals would be left in the world. The same thing would happen to the fish. And man, of course, could no longer exist. The food supply of the world depends on the fact that light can start chemical change. Oxygen released in the manufacture of plant food. Besides in one way or another giving us all of our food, plants, helped by light, also give us most of the free oxygen that we breathe. We and all animals get the energy by which we live by combining oxygen with the hydrogen of our food (forming water) and by combining oxygen with the carbon in our food (forming If there were only animals (including people) in the world, all the free oxygen in the air would in time be combined by the animals with hydrogen to make water and with carbon to make carbon dioxid (CO2). As animals cannot breathe water and cannot get any good from carbon dioxid, they would all smother. But the plants, as we have already said, use carbon dioxid (CO2) and water (H2O) to make food. They do not need so much oxygen, and so they set some of it free. The countless plants in the world set the oxygen free as rapidly as the countless animals combine it with hydrogen to make water and with carbon to make carbon dioxid. Since the water and carbon
Inference Exercise
Section 50. Chemical change caused by electricity.
You have already done an experiment showing that electricity can start chemical change, for you changed water into hydrogen and oxygen by passing a current of electricity through the water. The plating of metals is made possible by the fact that electricity helps chemical change. You can nickel plate a piece of copper in the following manner:
Pour over the piece of copper enough of the cleansing solution to cover it.
Fig. 178. Fig. 178. Plating the copper by electricity.Turn on the electricity. If the copper becomes black instead of silvery, clean it again in the cleansing solution, and move the two bare wires much farther apart,—practically the full width of the bowl. If the copper The electricity has started two chemical changes. It has made part of the piece of nickel combine with part of the solution of nickel salt to form more nickel salt, and it has made some of the nickel salt around the copper change into metallic nickel. Then the negative electricity in the copper has attracted the positive bits of nickel metal made from the nickel salt, and made them cling to the copper. If there is no dirt or grease on the copper, the particles of nickel get so close to it that they stick by adhesion, even after the electric attraction has ceased. This leaves the copper nickel-plated, but to make it shiny the nickel plating must be polished. Silver plating and gold plating are done substantially in the way that you have done the nickel plating, only gold salt or silver salt is used instead of nickel salt. Just as electricity helps chemical changes in plating, it helps changes in a storage battery. But in the storage battery the new compounds formed by "charging" the battery change back again and generate electricity when the poles of the battery are connected with each other by a good conductor.
Inference Exercise
Section 51. Chemical change releases energy.
If no energy were released by chemical change, we should run down like clocks, and could never be wound up again. We could breathe, but to do so would do us no more good than it would if oxygen could not combine with things. Oxidation would go on in our bodies, but it would neither keep us warm nor help us to move. A few spasmodic jerks of our hearts, a few gasps with our lungs, and they would stop, as the muscles would have no energy to keep them going. The sunlight might continue to warm the earth, as we are not sure that the sun gets any of its heat from chemical change. But fires, while they would burn for an instant, would be absolutely cold; no energy would be given out by the fuel combining with oxygen. But the fires could not burn long, because there would be nothing to keep the gases and fuel hot enough to make them combine with the oxygen. Even during the instant that a fire lasted it would be A fire gives out heat and light; both are kinds of energy. And it is the electric energy caused by the chemical change in batteries that runs submarines, electric automobiles, flashlights, and doorbells. Since burning (oxidation) is simply a form of chemical change, it is not difficult to realize that chemical change releases energy. Why glowworms glow. When a glowworm glows at night, or when the head of a match glows as you rub it on your wet hand in the dark, we call the light phosphorescence. The name "phosphorus" means light-bearing, and anything like the element phosphorus, that glows without actively burning, is said to be phosphorescent. Match heads have phosphorus in them. Phosphorescence is almost always caused by chemical change. The energy released is a dim light, not heat or electricity. Sometimes millions of microscopic sea animals make the sea water in warm regions phosphorescent. They, like fireflies, glowworms, and will-o'-the-wisps, have in them some substance that is slowly changing chemically, and energy is released in the form of dim light as the change takes place. Most luminous When you poured the hydrochloric acid on the zinc to make hydrogen, the flask became warm; the chemical change going on in the flask released heat energy.
Inference Exercise
Section 52. Explosions.
Usually we think of explosions as harmful, and they often are, of course. Yet without them we could no longer run automobiles; gasoline launches would stop at once; motorcycles would no longer run; gasoline Fig. 179. Fig. 179. The explosion of 75 pounds of dynamite. A "still" from a motion-picture film.Fig. 180. Fig. 180. Diagram of the cylinder of an engine. The piston is driven forward by the explosion of the gasoline in the cylinder.What makes an automobile go. In all the above cases the explosions are caused by chemical action. When gasoline mixed with air is sprayed into the cylinder of an automobile, an electric spark makes the gasoline combine with the oxygen of the air; the gasoline suddenly burns and changes to steam and carbon dioxid. As you already know, when a liquid like gasoline turns to gases such as steam and carbon dioxid, the gases take much more room. But that is not all that happens. Much heat is released by the burning of the gasoline spray, and heat causes expansion. So the gases formed by the burning gasoline are still further expanded by the heat released by the burning. Therefore they need a great deal more room; but they are shut up in a small place in the top of a cylinder. The only thing to hold them up in this small space, however, is a piston (Fig. 180), and the suddenly expanding gases shove this piston down and escape. The piston is attached to the An explosion is simply the sudden pushing of a confined gas expanding on its way to freedom. The gasoline vapor and air were the confined gas. Their chemical combining made them expand; by pushing the piston out of its way the newly formed gas suddenly freed itself. This was an explosion, and it gave the automobile one forward push. But the automobile engine is so arranged that the piston goes up into the cylinder again, and is pulled down again, drawing a spray of gasoline and air into the cylinder after it. Then it goes up a second time, an electric spark explodes the gasoline, the piston is forced down violently once more, and so it goes on. There are several cylinders, of course, and the explosions take place within them one after the other so as to keep the automobile going steadily. How a gun shoots. Pulling a trigger makes a gun shoot by causing an explosion. There is a spring on the hammer of a gun. This drives the hammer down suddenly when you release the spring by pulling the trigger. The hammer jars the chemicals in the cap and causes them to explode. The heat and flame then cause the oxygen in the gunpowder to combine with some of the other elements in the powder to make a gas. The gas requires more room than the powder and is further expanded by the heat released by the chemical change. The expanding gas frees itself by pushing the bullet Fig. 181. Fig. 181. The most powerful explosions on earth occur in connection with volcanic activity. The photograph shows Mt. Lassen, California, the only active volcano in the United States.There is a slight explosion even when you shoot an air gun. First you compress some air in the upper part of the barrel of the air gun; then you suddenly release it. The only thing in the way of the expanding air is the bullet; so the air pushes this out in front of it. In Experiment 36, where you stoppered a test tube containing a little water and then held the tube over a flame until the cork flew out, you were causing an explosion. As the water changed to steam, the steam was an expanding gas. It was at first confined to the test tube by the cork. Then there was an explosion; the gas freed itself by blowing out the cork. Steam boilers have safety valves to prevent explosions. These are valves so arranged that when the steam expands and presses hard enough to endanger the boiler, the steam will open the valves and escape instead of bursting the boiler to get free. Explosives. Dynamite, gunpowder, and most explosives are mixtures of solids or liquids that will combine easily and will form gases that expand greatly as a result of the combination. One of the essentials in explosives is some compound of oxygen (such as the manganese dioxid or potassium chlorate you used to make oxygen in Experiment 93) which will easily set its oxygen free. This oxygen combines very swiftly with something else in the explosive, releasing heat and forming a gas that takes much more room. In its effort to free itself, this expanding gas will blast rocks out of the way, shoot cannon balls, or do any similar work. But if gunpowder does not have to push anything of much importance out of its way to expand, there is no explosion. That is why a firecracker merely fizzes when you break it in two and light the powder. The cardboard no longer confines the expanding gas; so there is nothing to burst or to push violently out of the way. Useful explosions are generally caused by a chemical
Inference Exercise
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