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Nitric acid   /nˈaɪtrɪk ˈæsəd/   Listen
Nitric acid

noun
1.
Acid used especially in the production of fertilizers and explosives and rocket fuels.  Synonym: aqua fortis.






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"Nitric acid" Quotes from Famous Books



... nevertheless be the most momentous and mischievous event of modern history. Compared with the action of this destructive solvent, that of all other disintegrating agencies concerned in our decivilization is as the languorous indiligence of rosewater to the mordant fury of nitric acid. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... previously acquainted with Corporal Robert Sutton? I never saw a finer bit of unutterable indignation than came over the face of my hostess, as she slowly recognized him. She drew herself up, and dropped out the monosyllables of her answer as if they were so many drops of nitric acid. "Ah," quoth my lady, "we ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... snakes, unless you have some guarantee that, when it is your fate to be bitten by a snake, the phial will be at hand? For ammonia must act on the venom before the venom has had time to act upon you, or it will only add another pain to your end; and that gives only a few minutes to go upon. So with nitric acid and every agent that operates by neutralising the poison and not by counteracting its effects. And this has been the character of all the remedies hitherto put forward. "They are," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, "absolutely without any specific effect on the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... must be observed. Bleeding vessels should be tied. Then a compress composed of ten or twelve folds of cloth must be placed smoothly over the seat of injury and a bandage applied around the body, the two ends being fastened at the back. In the smaller kinds of hernia, nitric acid may sometimes be applied with success. This treatment should not be applied until the swelling and inflammation attending the appearance of the hernia have subsided; then, the contents of the hernia having been returned, the surface of skin corresponding to it is sponged over with a solution composed ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... of Soda.—(NaO, CO^{2}) Wash the bicarbonate of soda (NaO, 2CO^{2}) upon a filter, with cold water, until the filtrate ceases to give, after neutralization with diluted nitric acid (NO^{5}), a precipitate with nitrate of baryta, (BaO, NO^{5}), or nitrate of silver, (AgO, NO^{5}). That left upon the filter we make red hot in a platinum, silver, or porcelain dish. One atom of carbonic acid is expelled, and the residue is ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... strength, did this hater of lies spend in chasing empty breaths. Once he rode forty miles on horseback, simply to confirm or reject an assertion. Very early, however, he learned to put every report upon the touchstone, and under the nitric acid of criticism. He quickly gained experience, and saved much vexation to himself and his readers. In this way his letters became what they are, like coins put in the pyx, and mintage that survives the best of the goldsmiths. When read thirty-five years after the first drying of the ink, we ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... chemically has an exceptional inertness toward most other substances, but once it is a component part of a substance, almost all of these combinations are a very powerful source of energy, and all of them have a very strong effect upon organic life. Nitric acid acts through oxidation, the substances are burned up by the oxygen given off from the acid. Nitric acid occurs in nature, in a combination called nitrates. From the soil the nitrates pass into the plant. Nitrite of amyl acts upon our organs in a most violent and spasmodic way. Nitrous oxide is ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... grams of laminated gold, mixed with 20 grams of hydrochloric acid; 10 grams of nitric acid; the liquid thus composed is placed over a moderate fire, and stirred constantly until the gold passes into the state of chlorine; it is then allowed to cool. A second liquid is formed by dissolving 60 grams of cyanide of ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... has of it, to be sure. Nothing but pure gold and silver could ever stand such treatment. It is melted again, dissolved in nitric acid, squeezed under immense pressure, baked in a hot cellar, and finally carried to this dingy-looking room, at the left of the court-yard, where we have stood all this time. The metal is perfectly pure now, but before the final melting one-tenth of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... infusible of themselves, become soluble or fusible when mixed with certain others; thus, in this way, solution is got with the aid of reagents, and fusion with the help of fluxes. For example, lead is insoluble in water, but if nitric acid be added, the metal rapidly disappears. It is convenient, but somewhat inaccurate, to say that the acid dissolves the lead. If the lead be acted on by nitric acid alone, without water, it is converted into a white powder, ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... to a variety of bodies, distinguished, however, by their bases, as potash saltpetre, soda saltpetre, lime saltpetre, etc., which occur naturally. They are all compounds of nitric acid and bases, or the gases nitrogen and oxygen united to bases, and are found in all soils which have not been recently washed by rains, and which are protected ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... previously lectured upon it, at the Royal Institution, on 15 Jan., when he stated that, about fifteen years before, Braconnot had ascertained that sawdust, wood shavings, starch, linen and cotton fabrics, when treated with concentrated nitric acid, produced a gelatinous substance, which coagulated into a white mass, on the addition of water; this substance, which he called "xyloidine," was highly inflammable. Schonbein, however, made his explosive from purified cotton, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... discovery was a fraud, and that the nugget produced was a melted down brass candlestick. One would have imagined that even in those unenlightened days it would not have been difficult to have found a scientist sufficiently well informed to put a little nitric acid on the supposed nugget, and so determine whether it was the genuine article, without skinning a live man first to ascertain. My belief is that the unfortunate fellow really found gold, but, as Mr. Deas Thompson, the then Colonial Secretary, afterwards told Hargraves ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson



Words linked to "Nitric acid" :   nitrate, acid, aqua fortis, nitrify



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