How to Do Chemical Tricks — Chemical Affinity, Sympathetic Inks

From the above-given experiments it may be seen that, however matter may change its form it cannot really be destroyed.

This truth will appear in every experiment that can be performed, whether those given in this little book or in the most learned treatise on chemistry.

Chemical Affinity.

This high-sounding term means that substances have a power of uniting together that can be better explained by an experiment.

Allow a few drops of water to fall on a perfectly clean piece of iron.

In a short time a reddish-brown substance will appear on the iron that in ordinary language is called rust.

What does this mean?

Water is a compound substance composed of oxygen and hydrogen, but when brought into contact with iron the oxygen prefers to unite with the iron and sets the hydrogen free.

Hence, would the chemist say, oxygen has a “stronger affinity” for iron than for hydrogen.

In this case the rust is composed of rust, a combination of iron and oxygen called oxide of iron.

What has taken place may be shown by the following, which will be easily understood: Oxygen } Water + Iron = Oxide Hydrogen } of Iron + Hydrogen.

So all that the chemical combination in the above means is that the iron has taken the place of the hydrogen in the water used for the experiment.

If weighed it would be found as always, that the water and the iron weighed precisely the same as the oxide of iron and the hydrogen.

It is to this same principle of chemical affinity that the curious experiments of magic writing with sympathetic inks are possible.

Sympathetic Inks.

By means of these may be carried on a correspondence which is beyond the discovery of all not in the secret.

With one class of these inks the writing becomes visible only when moistened with a particular solution.

Thus, if we write to you with a solution of sulphate of iron the letters are invisible.

On the receipt of our letter, you rub over the sheet a feather or sponge, wet with a solution of nut-galls, and the letters burst forth into sensible being at once, and are permanent.

2. If we write with a solution of sugar of lead and you moisten with a sponge or pencil dipped in water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, the letters will appear with metallic brilliancy.

3. If we write with a weak solution of sulphate of copper, and you apply ammonia, the letters assume a beautiful blue.

When the ammonia evaporates as it does on exposure to the sun or fire, the writing disappears, but may be revived again as before.

4. If you write with oil of vitriol very much diluted, so as to prevent its destroying the paper, the manuscript will be invisible except when held to the fire, when the letters will appear black.

5. Write with cobalt dissolved in diluted muriatic acid; the letters will be invisible when cold, but when warmed they will appear a bluish green.

Secrets thus written will not be brought to the knowledge of a stranger, because he does not know the solution which was used in writing, and therefore knows not what to apply to bring out the letters.

Other forms of elective affinity produce equally novel results.

Thus, two invisible gases, when combined, form sometimes a _visible solid_.

Muriatic acid and ammonia are examples, also ammonia and carbonic acid.

On the other hand, if a solution of sulphate of soda be mixed with a solution of muriate of lime the whole becomes solid.

* * * * * Some gases when united form liquids, as oxygen and hydrogen, which unite and form water.

Some solids when combined form liquids.

Chemical affinity is sometimes called _elective_, or the effect of _choice_, as if one substance exerted a kind of _preference_ for another, and chose to be united to it rather than to that with which it was previously combined; thus, if you pour some vinegar, which is a weak acetic acid, upon some pearlash (a combination of potash and carbonic acid), or some carbonate of soda (a combination of the same acid with soda), a violent effervescence will take place, occasioned by the escape of the carbonic acid, displaced in consequence of the potash or soda preferring the acetic acid, and forming a compound called an acetate.

Then, if some sulphuric acid be poured on this new compound, the acetic acid will, in its turn, be displaced by the greater attachment of either of the bases, as they are termed, for the sulphuric acid.

Again, if into a solution of blue vitriol (a combination of sulphuric acid with copper), the bright blade of a knife be introduced, the knife will speedily be covered with a coat of copper, deposited in consequence of the acid _preferring_ the iron of which the knife is made, a quantity of it being dissolved in exact proportion to the quantity of copper deposited.

It is on the same principle that a very beautiful preparation called a silver-tree, or a lead-tree, may be formed, thus: Fill a wide bottle, capable of holding from half a pint to a pint, with a tolerably strong solution of nitrate of silver (lunar caustic), or acetate of lead, in pure distilled water.

Then attach a small piece of zinc by a string to the cork or stopper of the bottle, so that the zinc shall hang about the middle of the bottle, and set it by where it may be quite undisturbed.

In a short time brilliant plates of silver or lead, as the case may be, will be seen to collect around the piece of zinc, assuming more or less of the crystalline form.

This is a case of elective affinity; the acid with which the silver or lead was united _prefers_ the zinc to either of those metals, and in consequence discards them in order to attach the zinc to itself; and this process will continue until the whole of the zinc is taken up, or the whole of the silver or lead deposited.