[Jewelry making - Article 00016] - Re: [Orchid] Organic oxidyzer for copper?

[John Burgess]

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    G'day;   Now I've come all over academic (Shame, shame!!)    The
    word ORGANIC  has had it's original meaning considerably changed in
    the last half century.      If applied to a material it used to mean
    that the material was the product of some life process,  and the
    word INORGANIC was applied to anything that was not the result of a
    life process.  Thus all vegetables, plants and animals are organic
    in origin.   Thus to talk about , say, 'organic lettuces'  is
    nonsense - or course they are organic.    Inorganic lettuces don't
    exist.  So if you take a lettuce seed and grow it in a fertilizer
    made of minerals (nitrates, sulphates, iron, cobalt, selenium etc) 
    that lettuce is still organic.  So it was grown with inorganic
    fertilizers instead of life produced ones (like manure, compost,
    etc), but it is still organic. 

    Lets consider a material  used by jewellers;    'Liver of Sulphur'
    (potassium poly  sulphide) is inorganic; made from potassium and
    sulphur.  'Lime sulphur' (calcium poly sulphide is made by heating
    lime with sulphur. So it is an inorganic blackening agent for silver
    and copper. 

    You want an organic agent?  Well, stew your silver or copper with
    onions, or garlic, and the organically produced sulphur compounds in
    these once-living  plants will blacken the metals. And by the way,
    whilst I'm being academic, the silver or copper is not oxidized to
    blacken it;  the metals are sulphided!! 

    OK, so what about limestone, calcium carbonate?  Bit confusing here.
      Most limestone is the product of marine animals which once lived, 
     BUT - and here's the confusion.   Before life formed on this earth,
    there was  calcium carbonate, and some of it still exists.  Well,
    organic or inorganic?   So you see things get difficult if one tries
    to be too clever!     These days chemists try not to mention the two
    words. 

-- 
Cheers for now,
John Burgess;   johnb AT ts.co.nz of Mapua, Nelson NZ


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