Smelling Salt

Smelling salts Smell receptors Smelters Smelting... 

The pungent smell of decomposing ammonium carbonate once made it an effective smelling salt, a stimulant used to revive people who had fainted. 

As the time of her husband s arrival drew near, she began to take more and more of her pills, since she was still 10 pounds short of her goal. One week before the day of her husband s return, Mary passed out at home. Smelling salts would not wake her and a doctor pronounced her dead one hour later. 

Applications of ammonium carbonate are similar to those of ammonium bicarbonate. It is used in baking powder in fire extinguishers as mordant in dyeing for washing and defatting wools in tanning in manufacture of rubber products as a smelling salt as a source of ammonia, and as an expectorant. 

The pungent smell of decomposing ammonium carbonate made it an effective smelling salt, a stimulant used to revive people who had succumbed to fainting. The pungency of heated ammonium chloride was known in antiquity to the Ammonians, the worshippers of the Egyptian god Ammon. 

Figure 6.7 Principle of differential solubility and smelling salts...

Ammonium salts of weak acids are readily decomposed into the acid and ammonia. Ammonium carbonate [(NH3)2co3 h2oj is a colorless-to-white crystalline solid commonly known as smelling salts. In a water solution it is sometimes called aromatic spirits of ammonia . Ammonia also reacts with Lewis acids (electron acceptors) such as sulfur dioxide or sulfur trioxide or boron trifluoride219. 

Vaseline, i lb. box. Mortar or shallow dish. Smelling salts. Ammonium hydroxide. Sand. 

The inability to taste food is a common complaint when nasal congestion reduces the sense of smell. Thus, smell greatly augments our sense of taste (also known as gustation), and taste is, in many ways, the sister sense to olfaction. Nevertheless, the two senses differ from each other in several important ways. First, we are able to sense several classes of compounds by taste that we are unable to detect by smell salt and sugar have very little odor, yet they are primary stimuli of the gustatory system. Second, whereas we are able to discriminate thousands of odorants, discrimination by taste is much more modest. Five primary tastes are perceived bitter, sweet, sour, salty, and umami (the taste of glutamate from the Japanese word for "deliciousness"). These five tastes serve to classify compounds into potentially... 

Salts, smelling Ammonia-based preparations used as a restorative in hysterical syncope (fainting). Dry smelling salts (or vinaigrettes) are composed of ammonium chloride and potassium carbonate, perfumed with lavender liquid smelling salts are composed of ammonium carbonate dissolved in stronger ammonia water and alcohol, and perfumed with oils solidified smelling salts are similar preparations solidified with stearic acid. ... 

Therapeutically, dilute ammonia solution is used as a reflex stimulant in smelling salts , as a rubefacient, and as a counterirritant to neutralize insect bites or stings. ... 

Smelling salts often have an unstable ionic compoimd made of two polyatomic ions ammonium and carbonate. 

What percentage of ammonium carbonate, (NH4)2C03, an ingredient in smelling salts, is the ammonium ion, NHj ... 

NH4)2C03(s) 2NH3(g) + C02(g) + H20(g) Would you expect smelling salts to work as well on a cold winter day as on a warm summer day Explain your answer. 

Decomposing ammonium carbonate has a pungent odor and is used as a smelling salt to revive people who have fainted. 

Use Ammonium salts, medicine (expectorant), baking powders, smelling-salts, fire-extinguishing compounds, pharmaceuticals, textiles (mordant), fermentation accelerator in wine manufacture, organic chemicals, ceramics, washing wool. 

Paragraph 4. The ammonium cation in its salts has been widely used as smelling salts in medicine and as a fertiliser in agriculture, both uses due to the available ammonia provided. Why the ammonia is so readily available is part of the unpredictable chemistry of the cation ... 

Assume that you are picking up a few extra dollars to pay for textbooks by acting as a trainer s assistant for a heavyweight boxer. One of your jobs is to wave smelling salts under the nose of the fighter to clear his head between rounds. 

The smelling salts are ammonium carbonate, which decomposes in the following reaction to yield ammonia. The ammonia does the wake up job. Suppose the fighter gets a particularly nasty punch to the head and needs an extra jolt to be brought back to his senses. How could you shift the following equilibrium to the right to yield more ammonia ... 

Increased temperature will drive this endothermic reaction toward products, so warming the smelling salt container in your hands will increase the amount of ammonia released. 

Ammonium sulphate we have already mentioned as an artificial manure. The chloride is used in soldering, and its solution forms the electrolyte in Leclanch6 cells. The nitrate is the source of laughing gas, and the commercial carbonate is commonly the principal constituent of smelling salts. ... 

Ammonia is a colorless gas with a very sharp odor. The odor is familiar to most people because ammonia is used in smelling salts, household cleaners, and window cleaning products. 

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