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Word caoutchouc comes from the Indian word "caou" - tree and "tchouc" - cry. Notched bark of the tree Hevea, the Indians of South America made it "cry" and collected effluent juice - latex when heated latex smallest contained therein resin beads combined and precipitated. Washing the precipitate and maintaining it over the fire, the Indians received...

The statement that mercury is the only liquid metal at room temperature (18-22 degrees Celsius) is known to everyone from school years. It is invariably reproduced in many current manuals and even reference books and encyclopedias on chemistry and metallurgy. The liquid metal of France, melting at a temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, eliminated the mercury monopoly...

Kerosene is a combustible mixture of liquid hydrocarbons (from C₈ to C₁₅) with a boiling point in the range 150-250⁰ C, transparent, colorless ( or slightly yellowish), slightly oily to the touch. The very interpretation of the word "kerosene" is already curious...

What good is the experience of drawing with iodine - everything you need for it, probably, is at home: a candle, pharmacy iodine (alcohol solution, iodine tincture) and some worthless iron object - an old door hinge, a key from an unknown lock or a lock whose keys are lost. The metal surface on which iodine will be painted, polish the emery cloth to a shine...

With the physicochemical phenomenon, which will now be discussed, probably everyone knows, although, perhaps, not everyone knows that it is called adsorption. Even if you did not pass adsorption in the classroom, you observed it repeatedly. As soon as you put an inkblot on paper or, worse, on clothes, then immediately get acquainted with this phenomenon...

In 1884, the great Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in his doctoral dissertation first introduced the world to his famous teaching - electrolytic dissociation. The new theory was so revolutionary that it caused extraordinary twists of fate in the life of this scientist. At first the whole world seemed to take hostilely to his ideas...