AgNO3

An experience. Porcelain cup covered with two or three sheets of filter paper. Pour 1-2 g of AgNO3 crystals into a test tube and heat them in the flame of a gas burner or an alcohol lamp. At 218 degrees Celsius, the salt melts and turns into a pale greenish liquid. The melted AgNO3 drop by drop is poured onto the paper. It flares up instantly and burns. At the bottom of the cup, the liquid salt thickens and crystallizes as a gray mass (AgNO3 with an admixture of metallic Ag).

Porcelain cup covered with two or three sheets of filter paper. Pour 1-2 g of AgNO3 crystals into a test tube and heat them in the flame of a gas burner or an alcohol lamp

Molten AgNO3 is an extremely active oxidizer, easily decomposed:

2AgNO3 = 2Ag + 2NO2 + O2,

and therefore it and the gaseous products of its decomposition very vigorously oxidize the cellulose.

Silver nitrate can be obtained by dissolving silver in nitric acid by the reaction:

Ag + 2HNO3 = AgNO3 + NO2 + H2O.

Silver nitrate AgNO3 is a reagent for hydrochloric acid and hydrochloric acid salts, as it interacts with them to form a curdled silver chloride precipitate insoluble in nitric acid:

HCl + AgNO3 = AgCl + HNO3.

Silver nitrate is used in medicine (lapis pencil) for cauterization of wounds and removal of small warts. For the first time AgNO3 doctors used Jan-Baptist van Helmont and Francis de la Boeu Silvius, who learned how to obtain silver nitrate by interacting with nitric acid. They found that touching the crystals of the resulting silver salt leads to the appearance of black spots on the skin, and with prolonged contact - deep burns. The therapeutic effect of silver nitrate is to suppress the vital activity of microorganisms; in small concentrations it acts as an anti-inflammatory and astringent agent, and concentrated solutions, like AgNO3 crystals, cauterize living tissues.

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