FEB 11 1896 



JOURNAL 



OF THE 



Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society. 



REACTIONS BETWEEN COPPER AND CON- 

 CENTRATED SULPHURIC ACID.i 



BY CHAS. BASKBRVILIvE. 



Andrews- in writing- on the " Assumption of a Spe- 

 cial Nascent State," argued that the production of sul- 

 phur dioxide, as a result of the reaction between cop- 

 per and concentrated sulphuric acid, was due, not to 

 nascent hydrog-en, as is commonly considered, but to 

 the deoxidation of sulphur trioxide by the copper with 

 the production of copper oxide as a primary product. 

 Having- noted frequently the evolution of sulphur diox- 

 ide g-as before any evidence of this " copper oxide," at 

 the sug-g-estion of Dr. F. P. Venable, I beg^an some 

 experiments with a view of studying- this complicated 

 reaction, so simply treated in most text-books. 



When m}^ work was completed, in verifying* my refer- 

 ences I chanced on Pickering-'s^ work on the same sub- 

 ject which had escaped me. Most of my work, espe- 

 cially that part which concerns the secondary reactions, 

 is in accord with that of Professor Pickering*. My 

 observations concerning- the primary reactions were not 



1 Read at the Spring-field meeting- of American Chemical Society- 

 2, Chem. News, 70, 152 ; Iowa Acad, of Sciences. Proc. p. 4. 



