Oleum - Reactions

Reactions

Like concentrated sulfuric acid, oleum is such a strong dehydrating agent that if poured onto powdered glucose, or virtually any other sugar, it will draw the elements of water out of the sugar in an exothermic reaction, leaving nearly pure carbon as a solid. This carbon expands outward, hardening as a solid black substance with gas bubbles in it.

Read more about this topic:  Oleum

Famous quotes containing the word reactions:

    In this Journal, my pen is a delicate needle point, tracing out a graph of temperament so as to show its daily fluctuations: grave and gay, up and down, lamentation and revelry, self-love and self-disgust. You get here all my thoughts and opinions, always irresponsible and often contradictory or mutually exclusive, all my moods and vapours, all the varying reactions to environment of this jelly which is I.
    W.N.P. Barbellion (1889–1919)

    Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
    James Baldwin (1924–1987)