01Sep 2016 by Vincent Summers 1 Comment

Acids, Bases, Salts: Can An Oxide Be A Salt?

Chemistry, Education
[caption id="attachment_15469" align="alignright" width="440"] Aluminum chloride, hexahydrate. - Image Victor Claessen CC-SA 3.0.[/caption] Acids, bases, salts: Can an oxide be a salt? Let’s find out. Combine an acid and a base and you often get back a salt and water. This should be no surprise. It is high school chemistry. Assume we have a most simple acid, H-A. Too, we have a most simple base, B-OH. If we react the two, we expect the reaction mechanism to be written, H-A + B-OH → B-A + H2O H2O is, of course, water. B-A is the expected salt. Is An Oxide a Salt? Let us consider an example that deviates from the above simple concept—aluminum. Metals tend toward cationic (+) behavior. Non-metals act in opposite fashion, tending toward anionic (-) behavior. Aluminum…
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15Feb 2016 by Vincent Summers 2 Comments

Magnesium Chloride Anti-Icing Spray

Bible, Chemistry
How does your department of transportation deal with winter? Do they use a magnesium chloride anti-icing road treatment ahead of a snow storm? I am a chemist. I live where it snows a number of times each year. Road safety requires local transportation departments to plow during storms. Their efforts are enhanced if preparation is made beforehand. One way to accomplish this is by spraying roads ahead of time with anti-icing spray. Sand Spreading sand does help traction, but it doesn’t prevent or eliminate ice. There is another reason to use something besides sand. Has the reader heard of sandblasting? Particles of sand are blown against a surface to clean it. In fact, it is used to blast away paint from a painted surface. Is that what you want for…
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