How One Fateful Explosion Gave Us The Bunsen Burner

Robert Bunsen is most famous for inventing the Bunsen burner , which he technically did not invent . What he ’s not famous for is much more interesting . His most altruistic research , which has saved many lives , very nearly killed him , and led to to the research that gave us the burner .

Chemists in the 19th century were a varied pot , but they could be characterized by one rough-cut trait : a outstanding want of concern for their own safety gadget . If anything stunk , boiled , burned , exploded , or pass off poisonous fumes , there was a pill pusher standing right beside it . So it ’s fitting that Robert Bunsen , a bud scientist with an pursuit in chemistry , drop his free time gamboling up to the edge of volcano to gather up the fumes and rigging pressure - driven geysers in his office staff . It ’s also fitting that his favourite area of field of study ( in chemistry at least ) was arsenic .

Everyone knew that arsenic was vicious ; it had been used to dispatch the great unwashed since Roman times . Bunsen turned his view on cacodyls , which are made up of a number of different chemicals , all of which seemed to be poisonous , but none of which , besides arsenic , anyone had really figured out yet . Bunsen ’s reports on the subject field include pollyannaish lines like “ the smell of this consistence produce instant tingling of the hands and feet , and even giddiness and insensibility ” and “ it is remarkable that when one is exposed to the smell of these chemical compound the tongue becomes covered with a black coating . ”

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His tongue was not blackened in egotistical . Bunsen discovered a treatment for arsenic poisoning that is still used today . smoothing iron oxide hydrate , or ferric hydrate , is only useful on arsenic that ’s still in the tummy , but it ’s a spate unspoiled than last rites . The chemical compound basically catch have of dissolved arsenic in a solution , and make it into indissoluble and indigestible arsenate of Fe . fundamentally , the iron forms rust with the arsenic trioxide , and the body does n’t brook the toxicant .

Sadly , this is not the only peril of cacodyls . Among their many other obnoxious traits is a disposition to spontaneously combust when exposed to air . Bunsen accidentally exposed his material to air and determine off an explosion that be him an eye . After his brush with death and sightlessness he moved on to spectroscopy , the science of using the luminance a burning gist emits to analyze what atoms the substance contains . for get a good flame , he modified an existing burner , and his modifications amount to be known as the Bunsen burner . And that ’s how one explosion in a lab altered the course of scientific history .

[ ViaCorrosion Dr. , The Prophylaxis and Treatment of Internal Diseases ]

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