How to Do Chemical Tricks — To Form a Liquid from Two Solids, Restoration of Color by Water, Two Liquids Make a Solid, Two Solids Make a Liquid, A Solid Opaque Mass Makes a Transparent Liquid, Two Cold Liquids Make a Hot One
Write with French chalk on a looking-glass; wipe it with a handkerchief and the lines will disappear; breathe on it and they will reappear.
This alteration will take place for a great number of times, and after the lapse of a considerable period.
To Form a Liquid from Two Solids.
Rub together in a mortar a small quantity of sulphate of soda and acetate of lead, and as they mix they will become liquid.
Carbonate of ammonia and sulphate of copper, previously reduced to powder separately, will also, when mixed, become liquid, and acquire a most splendid blue color.
The greater number of salts have a tendency to assume regular forms, or become _crystallized_, when passing from the fluid to the solid state;
and the size and regularity of the crystals depends in a great measure on the slow or rapid escape of the fluid in which they were dissolved.
Sugar is a capital example of this property; the ordinary loaf-sugar being rapidly boiled down, as it is called; while to make rock-candy, which is nothing but sugar in a crystallized form, the solution is allowed to evaporate slowly, and as it cools it forms into those beautiful crystals termed rock-candy.
The threads found in the center of some of the crystals are merely placed for the purpose of hastening the formation of the crystals.
Restoration of Color by Water.
Water being a colorous fluid ought, one would imagine when mixed with other substances of no decided color, to produce a colorless compound.
Nevertheless, it is to water only that blue vitriol or sulphate of copper owes its vivid blueness, as will be plainly evinced by the following simple experiment.
Heat a few crystals of the vitriol in a fire-shovel, pulverize them, and the powder will be of a dull and dirty white appearance.
Pour a little water upon this when a slight hissing noise will be heard, and at the same moment the blue color will instantly reappear.
Under the microscope the beauty of this experiment will be increased, for the instant that a drop of water is placed in contact with the vitriol, the powder may be seen to shoot into blue prisms.
If a crystal of prussiate of potash be similarly heated its yellow color will vanish, but reappear on being dropped into water.
Two Liquids Make a Solid.
Dissolve chloride of lime in water until it will dissolve no more;
measure out an equal quantity of oil of vitriol; both will be transparent fluids; but if equal quantities of each be slowly mixed and stirred together, they will become a solid mass, with the evolution of smoke or fumes.
Two Solids Make a Liquid.
Rub together in a mortar equal quantities of the crystals of Glauber salts and nitrate of ammonia, and the two salts will slowly become a liquid.
A Solid Opaque Mass Makes a Transparent Liquid.
Take the solid mixture of the solutions of muriate of lime and carbonate of potash, pour upon it a very little nitric acid, and the solid opaque mass will be changed to a transparent liquid.
Two Cold Liquids Make a Hot One.
Mix four drams of sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) with one dram of cold water, suddenly, in a cup, and the mixture will be nearly half as hot again as boiling water.
