Adjective:

Cuprous,

cuprous's Usage Examples:

Before the commercial production of calcium carbide made it one of the most easily obtainable gases, the processes which were most largely adopted for its preparation in laboratories were: - first, the decomposition of ethylene bromide by dropping it slowly into a boiling solution of alcoholic potash, and purifying the evolved gas from the volatile bromethylene by washing it through a second flask containing a boiling solution of alcoholic potash, or by passing it over moderately heated soda lime; and, second, the more ordinarily adopted process of passing the products of incomplete combustion from a Bunsen burner, the flame of which had struck back, through an ammoniacal solution of cuprous chloride, when the red copper acetylide was produced.

Acetylene is readily soluble in water, which at normal temperature and pressure takes up a little more than its own volume of the gas, and yields a solution giving a purple-red precipitate with ammoniacal cuprous chloride and a white precipitate with silver nitrate, these precipitates consisting of acetylides of the metals.

It may conveniently be extended to similar mixtures of sulphur and selenium or tellurium, of bismuth and sulphur, of copper and cuprous oxide, and of iron and carbon, in fact to all cases in which substances can be made to mix in varying proportions without very marked indication of chemical action.

The following are the most important exceptions: silver chloride, AgC1, and mercurous chloride, HgCI, are absolutely insoluble; lead chloride, PbC1 2, and cuprous chloride, CuCI, are very sparingly soluble in water.

Nitro compounds have also been prepared by the action of cuprous oxide on diazonium salts (T.

Volumetric methods are used, but the uncertainty of the end of the reaction has led to the suggestion of special indicators, or of determining the amount of cuprous oxide gravimetrically.

Barreswil found that a strongly alkaline solution of copper sulphate and potassium sodium tartrate (Rochelle salt) remained unchanged on boiling, but yielded an immediate precipitate of red cuprous oxide when a solution of glucose was added.

If a glucose solution be added to copper sulphate and much alkali added, a yellowish-red precipitate of cuprous hydrate separates, slowly in the cold, but immediately when the liquid is heated; this precipitate rapidly turns red owing to the formation of cuprous oxide.

It forms a characteristic explosive silver salt on the addition of ammoniacal silver nitrate to its aqueous solution, and an amorphous precipitate which explodes on warming with ammoniacal cuprous chloride.

The action of these acids on many metals was also studied; Glauber obtained zinc, stannic, arsenious and cuprous chlorides by dissolving the metals in hydrochloric acid, compounds hitherto obtained by heating the metals with corrosive sublimate, and consequently supposed to contain mercury.

Synonyms:

cupric,