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It is one of the most powerful oxidizing agents known, and it doesn't even melt the rest of the steel surface. You see how it ate its way directly through this plate. Steel, hard or soft, tempered, annealed, chrome, or Harveyized it all burns just as fast and just as easily. And it's comparatively inexpensive, also.
A. It is the natural effect of surcharged steam to oxidate the iron with which it is in contact, as is illustrated by the familiar process for making hydrogen gas by sending steam through a red hot tube filled with pieces of iron; and although the action of the surcharged steam in a boiler is necessarily very much weaker than where the iron is red hot, it manifestly must have some oxidizing effect, and the amount of corrosion produced may be very material where the action is perpetual.
We happened to visit the melting-house one evening, while silver and lead were being separated by oxidizing the lead in a reverberatory furnace. Here we noticed a curious effect. The melted litharge ran from the mouth of the furnace upon a floor of damp sand, and spread over it in a sheet.
A substance which will serve satisfactorily as a standard for oxidizing solutions must possess certain specific properties: It must be of accurately known composition and definite in its behavior as a reducing agent, and it must be permanent against oxidation in the air, at least for considerable periods.
The author considers that the mere presence of oxygen in contact with the organic matter has but little oxidizing action unless lowly organisms, as bacteria, etc. be simultaneously present. Sunlight has apparently considerable effect in promoting the oxidation of organic matter. The author quotes the following experiment: A sample of river water was filtered through paper.
The acid will dissolve magnesium pyrophosphate from the surface of the particles of carbon, which will then burn away. Nitric acid also aids as an oxidizing agent in supplying oxygen for the combustion of the carbon. The magnesium ammonium phosphate is readily dissolved by acids, even those which are no stronger than acetic acid.
Other causes, such as friction and crushing in the making of mountains and the chemical reactions between oxidizing agents of the crust and the unoxidized interior, have been suggested, but to most geologists they seem inadequate. There is much difference of opinion as to the FORCE which causes molten rock to rise to the surface in the ducts of volcanoes.
In proceeding to the account of his experiments, M. Schoenbein shews, that gases can be produced by chemical means, which exercise an oxidizing influence of a powerful nature, especially in their physiological effects, even when diffused through the atmosphere in very minute quantities: also, that owing to the immense number of organic beings on the earth, their daily death and decomposition, an enormous amount of gases is produced similar to those which can be obtained by artificial means; and besides these, a quantity of gaseous or volatile products, 'whose chemical nature, as the author observes, 'is as yet unknown, but of which we can easily admit that some, at least, diffused through the air, even in very small quantities, and breathed with it, exert a most deplorable action on the animal organism.
Overworking and other conditions tending to produce large eggs and females also throw white mutants and show other signs of weakness. Old females lay larger eggs than do young ones. These eggs produce more females. They store more material, have a lower metabolism and less oxidizing capacity than do the earlier male-producing eggs.
This crumbling we generally call weathering, and regard it as due to the effect of moisture and cold upon the rocks, together with the oxidizing action of the air. Doubtless this is true, and the weathering action is largely a physical and chemical one. Nevertheless, in this fundamental process of rock disintegration bacterial action plays a part, though perhaps a small one.
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