Kohlenberg—Action of Metallic Magnesium , Etc. 303 
ducted at room temperature which, was nearly 20°. The or¬ 
dinary distilled water of the laboratory was used. The chem¬ 
icals were either of Kahlbaum’s or Schuchardt’s manufacture; 
they were tested as to their purity, special care being taken to 
see that they were free from traces of heavy metals, and in the 
case of the salts employed, that they were perfectly neutral. 
Although only one series of results will be given in each case, 
each series was checked by at least one additional independent 
series. In the tables that follow, the first column indicates the 
solution employed, the heading of each succeeding column in¬ 
dicates the time that a bar of magnesium acted upon the solu¬ 
tion in order to liberate the volume of hydrogen given in that 
column. 
Table 1. 
(Solutions contained two gram.-mols. per liter except the mannite and sodium sul¬ 
phate solutions, which contained one gram.-mol- per liter.) 
Solute. 
2.5 hrs. 
23.5 hrs. 
47.5 hrs. 
53 hrs. 
Distilled water (alone). 
Alcohol. 
0.02 cc 
0.10 
0.10 cc 
0.40 
1.5 cc 
7.6 
1.8 cc 
7.8 
Glycerine .... 
0 01 
0.05 
0.5 
0.55 
Cane sugar. 
0.10 
0.65 
1.0 
1.2 
Mannite..j. 
0.08 
0 20 
0.4 
0.55 
Urea. 
1.2 
10.6 
29.0 
31.0 
Sodium chloride. 
7.4 
49.8 
(discont 
18.0 
inued.) 1 
Sodium sulphate. 
2.4 
9.9 
18.8 
1 The word “discontinued” where used in the tables means that the experiment was 
discontinued, not that the hydrogen ceased to be evolved. The experiments in these 
cases had to be stopped because more gas could not be held in the tube used. 
In the case of the urea solution, ammonia as well as. hydros 
gen was liberated. When sodium nitrate solution is treated 
with magnesium only a slight amount of hydrogen is actually 
evolved; this is due to the fact that the salt is reduced to ni¬ 
trite. From a solution of ammonium chloride containing 2 
gram-mols. per liter, over 50 cc of gas consisting of hydrogen 
and ammonia was liberated by one of the bars of magnesium in 
five minutes. 
