VII. The conditions of chemical change between nitric acid and certain metals

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Abstract
The science of chemistry presents few problems at once of such technical importance and such almost infinite complexity as the transformations of nitric acid; few problems, therefore, have been studied with so much diligence by a number of investigators. The preparation of certain metallic nitrates, the chemical changes and correlated electromotive forces of certain forms of batteries, require but to be mentioned, while the preparation of nitric oxide gas from metallic copper and moderately concentrated nitric acid forms both an exercise set before the veriest tyro in chemistry and the subject of several extensive memoirs. Within the last ten years no investigations have attracted so much attention as those which have proved beyond doubt that chemical changes hither6to regarded as almost fundamental, and as occurring between two substances, whether elementary or compound, do not in reality take place except in presence of some third substance. Thus, Dixon has shown that carbonic oxide will not combine with oxygen; H. B. Baker, that sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon do not burn in oxygen; Wanklyn, as also Cowper, that certain metals will not burn in chlorine; and other results might also be enumerated. In all these cases the necessary tertium quid is water.

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