Otaku Engineer in Great Tang Dynasty Chapter 1074: The alchemist who has become enchanted! (Next)
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In a certain episode of the TV series "The Palace", the heroine Luo Qingchuan remembered a passage from a teacher in a modern school in order to escape from the underground palace: "Sulfuric acid has existed in ancient China, but it was not called sulfuric acid at the time. The green alum is not used in industrial production. It is usually used to treat diseases such as typhoid fever and dysentery. There are historical records. The ancient thieves ignited the green alum collected from the drugstore with fire to make it into a liquid and corrode the rich. The walls of households were stolen from the house, which shows that sulfuric acid was widely used more than a thousand years ago."
Although green alum can indeed be used to make sulfuric acid, the statement in the TV series is very problematic!
According to the "Compendium of Materia Medica", green vitriol is a traditional Chinese medicine that can treat typhoid fever, malaria and other diseases. But green alum does not burn, so it is definitely wrong to prepare sulfuric acid by igniting green alum.
In the first "Chemistry Laboratory" of Datang, the second half of Wang Ji's words made Li Zexuan curious. He asked: "Some early experiences? What experience did Mr. Wang have in his early years?"
Wang Ji's face blushed, and he said with some shame: "The old man was a Taoist priest in his early years, and he also practiced elixir..."
Li Zexuan widened his eyes, looked at Wang Ji like an alien, and said: "Mr. Wang, have you ever practiced an elixir before?"
He only knew that Wang Ji had a good literary talent and had been a Taoist priest, but he had never thought that this old man was an alchemist, a turtle, and the academy really found a treasure... a ghost! Ghost!
Wang Ji was embarrassed, he hurriedly coughed twice and said:
"Ahem! Those are things from the past. Don't mention it again! Don't mention it!"
Wang Ji, who has studied "Chemistry" now, has completely understood how ridiculous the pill refining practices he used to be. The elixir he cultivated is nothing more than poison pill! If it weren't for Li Zexuan's question today, he would never have mentioned the matter of alchemy back then. In his opinion, this matter should be counted as a stain in his life!
Li Zexuan pursed his lips and smiled, and said: "Haha! Then leave it alone! Mr. Wang, keep talking."
Wang Ji looked at Li Zexuan with a "sorrowful" look, and then continued:
"Back then, when the old man made alchemy, he once cast green vitriol into the furnace, but a small piece of the furnace was corroded! A few days ago, the old man suddenly remembered this accidentally, and combined with the mountain In the "Chemistry" textbook you compiled, I feel that the reason why the pill furnace was corroded was probably because the green vitriol was decomposed at high temperature to produce sulfuric acid!"
Li Zexuan's expression became complicated upon hearing this.
In his previous life, he read a post in Post Bar, saying: Why did the western alchemy develop into chemistry, while the eastern alchemy only left some illusory elixir?
Actually, this argument is a bit too one-sided. Ancient Chinese alchemists were not useless. They invented gunpowder, invented sulfuric acid, and discovered redox, metal replacement, and acid-base neutralization reactions.
For example, Ge Hong, the alchemist of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, successfully summed up "the burning of cinnabar becomes mercury, and the accumulation of changes turns into cinnabar." This is the first time that mankind has obtained the same substance as natural products through chemical means, which can be called a great creation;
From the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, many alchemists’ writings recorded that iron was put in a solution of bile vitriol (copper sulfate) to replace copper. This method is called bile copper leaching method. It does not require high-temperature smelting to obtain copper powder. It is easy to operate and low in cost. It is the world's earliest metal replacement reaction;
From 650 to 683 AD (the time of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty), the alchemist Lone Gangzi recorded in the book "The Yellow Emperor Jiuding Shendan Sutra" Volume Nine "The method of refining stone gallbladder to extract essence", that is, dry distillation stone gallbladder (Ball alum) to obtain sulfuric acid. If it is expressed by a chemical equation:
cuso4·5h2o=cuso4＋5h2o
cuso4=cuo＋so3↑
so3＋h2o=h2so4
This is the earliest and well-documented case of sulfuric acid production in the world!
The alchemists in the West originally tried to refine base metals such as copper, iron, and lead into precious gold and silver, with the purpose of increasing wealth. In the Western Middle Ages~IndoMTL.com~Alchemists believed that all metals are composed of mercury and sulfur. Mercury is the source of all metals. Sulfur is a common component of all combustible substances, while gold and silver contain The purest mercury and sulfur.
Therefore, in their opinion, the difference between ordinary metals and precious gold and silver lies in the difference in the ratio and purity of mercury and sulfur contained in them. The use of a "philosopher's stone" can change the metal Nature, convert base metals into precious metals.
This kind of "philosopher's stone" is revered by people as the wise stone. It is sacred and has magical universal attributes. Countless alchemists have gone through thousands of mountains and rivers and tried their best to find the legendary wise stone.
As a result, what alchemists have long been engaged in is this kind of invalid labor in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms.
From the ancient Greek era to the Middle Ages, people spent more than a thousand years on alchemy experiments. In the end, the dream of turning stones into gold was not realized, but the pursuit of one thousand years did not make them give up their dreams!
So, from this perspective, the Western medieval alchemy represents a spirit of scientific inquiry. Perhaps this is why Western alchemy has been continuously developed and finally found its destination on the road of science. Although the alchemy of my country and Arab countries developed earlier, it only stayed in the primitive form of chemistry.
Looking at Western alchemy with dialectical thinking, it can be seen that Western alchemy has evolved from a blind pursuit of a little bit of stone into gold in the early days, and later development of exploration and knowledge of natural materials. But without the painstaking exploration of the early alchemists, there is probably no chemistry in the modern sense.
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