A manual of chemistry, inorganic and organic : inorganic and organic, with an introduction to the study of chemistry / by Arthur P. Luff.

Arthur P. Luff

Date:: 1892

Credit: A manual of chemistry, inorganic and organic : inorganic and organic, with an introduction to the study of chemistry / by Arthur P. Luff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

48/558 page 28

$is spoken of as a pair of affinities becoming latent; that is, the combining power is not destroyed, but is simply rendered latent or is hidden for the time, for it is possible, by chemical means, to com])el these pairs of latent affinities to unloose themselves and to exert their full atom-hxing power. Thus, as the student will learn later, it is possible to compel the S in HoS, in which it is acting as a dyad, to unloose a pair of its latent affinities and act as a teti-ad, and, in like manner, sulphur exerting the atomicity of a tetrad can be made to exert its full atom-tixing power as a hexad, by the opening of its last pair of latent affinities. We will now consider how it is that nitrogen is capable of acting as a pentad, triad, and monad. Nitrogen when it exerts its full atom-fixing powers is a pentad, and is therefore represented graphically as possessing five affinities, thus : / \ If a pair of these affinities become latent, the nitrogen atoms will then only have three affinities left free, and will then be exerting the power of a triad ; in this condition it may be represented graphically thus: o If now another pair of affinities become latent, the nitrogen atom will then only have one affinity left free, and will then exert only the power of a monad, thus:$