JOURNAL 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. II, MAY 4, 1912 No. 9 



CHEMISTRY. — The ammonia system of acids, bases and salts. 

 Edward C. Franklin, Hygienic Laboratory, U. S. Public 

 Health and Marine Hospital Service. To appear in full in 

 the American Chemical Journal. 



A consideration of the may points of resemblance between 

 water and liquid ammonia 1 as electrolytic solvents has led the 

 writer to the conception of a system of acids, bases and salts 

 in which ammonia occupies a position similar to that held by 

 water in its relation to the ordinary oxygen acids, bases and salts. 

 The compounds which are thus related to ammonia are respec- 

 tively the familiar acid amides, the less familiar metallic amides 

 and imides and the metallic derivatives of the acid amides and 

 imides. 



The formal analogies between the typical substance, water, 

 with its family of derivatives, the aquo acids, aquo bases and aquo 

 salts on the one hand, and ammonia with its derivatives, the 

 ammono acids, ammono bases and ammono salts, on the other, 

 will be clear from an inspection of the following table in which 

 are given the names of formulas of a number of representatives 

 of each class. 



Nor are the analogies thus indicated merely formal, for the 

 well known properties which characterize the ordinary acids, bases 

 and salts are found to attach also to the ammonia derivatives 

 as follows: (1) Liquid ammonia solutions of the ammono acids, 

 bases and salts are conductors of electricity, which property, it 



1 Not the familiar aqua ammonia, but pure ammonia gas liquefied by pressure 

 or low temperature. 



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