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Alchemical symbols were used to denote chemical elements and compounds, as well as alchemical apparatus and processes, until the 18th century. Although notation was partly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists. Lüdy-Tenger [1] published an inventory of 3,695 symbols and variants, and that was not exhaustive, omitting for ...
Chlorine is produced from sodium chloride (common salt, NaCl) using electrolysis to separate the metallic sodium from the chlorine gas. Usually the salt is dissolved in water to produce a brine. By-products of any such chloralkali process are hydrogen (H 2) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH), which is commonly called caustic soda or lye.
Natron is a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate ( Na 2 CO 3 ·10H 2 O, a kind of soda ash) and around 17% sodium bicarbonate (also called baking soda, NaHCO 3) along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. Natron is white to colourless when pure, varying to gray or yellow with impurities.
Alchemy (from Arabic: al-kīmiyā; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, khumeía) [1] is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. [2] In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts ...
Alkahest. Image of Alchimia, the embodiment of alchemy. Woodcut published by Leonhard Thurneysser in 1574. Thurneysser was a student of Paracelsus. In Renaissance alchemy, alkahest was the theorized "universal solvent ". [nb 1] It was supposed to be capable of dissolving any composite substance, including gold (then not considered an element ...
Chalcanthum – the residue produced by strongly roasting blue vitriol (copper sulfate); it is composed mostly of cupric oxide. Chalk – a rock composed of porous biogenic calcium carbonate. CaCO 3. Chrome green – chromic oxide and cobalt oxide. Chrome orange – chrome yellow and chrome red.
The philosopher's stone [a] is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold or silver [b]; it was also known as "the tincture" and "the powder". Alchemists additionally believed that it could be used to make an elixir of life which made possible rejuvenation and immortality.
Alchemists toiled to make transformations on an esoteric (spiritual) and/or exoteric (practical) level. It was the protoscientific, exoteric aspects of alchemy that contributed heavily to the evolution of chemistry in Greco-Roman Egypt, in the Islamic Golden Age, and then in Europe. Alchemy and chemistry share an interest in the composition and ...