"Cotton!" Bush still hasn't looked back.

"Cotton! Do you want me to see that the cotton will burn all the way up? At this time, Hong Tao had already walked behind Bush, and without Bush saying anything, he saw the white stuff soaked in the bottle, and then his heart suddenly jumped. That is, the amount of cotton in this clump is very small, only the size of a finger's belly, but if there is more, he will definitely turn around and run.

Nitrocellulose! This is the lump of cotton that Bush is making in his bottle. What is this? Smokeless gunpowder! It is also called cotton wool. Its combustion speed is very fast, if the composition is well controlled, there will be basically no residue left after deflagration, it is a very good fire-bursting charge, much stronger than black powder. However, this thing is very dangerous and unstable, and it can explode at a room temperature of more than 40 degrees.

Hong Tao never thought of making smokeless gunpowder at present, because its safety is too low, and if you want to actually use nitrocellulose, you have to get out of ether, which is a large number of chemical experiments, and whether it can be done under the current conditions is still a big problem.

In the science of chemistry, there are many branches, and often one reaction can bring out several side reactions, and each side reaction can bring out a new series of compounds. All he asked Bush was to let him get nitric acid and hydrochloric acid out, and then test lead-acid batteries, but he didn't expect him to secretly start nitrocellulose.

“…… Master, you know, so why don't you teach me! This time, Bush turned around, not only turned back, but also turned his body around, and the seriousness that he had just given up on others was gone.

"I'll teach you? Teach you to die! This thing is easy to fry, and the master can't figure it out, how did you find it? Hong Tao said as he used tweezers to take out the ball of cotton and throw it into the basin, and then put his heart down. Even if it was only a little bit, he also felt uncomfortable.

"Didn't you ask me to get nitric acid, I got it, it's not difficult at all, you just need to control the temperature." With your glass thermometer, you can find the right temperature with a few more experiments. Later, I poured sulfuric acid into nitric acid to see what aqua regia you were talking about, but the cup was hot and cracked, and the solution was sprinkled on the table. I wiped the leaking mixture with a cloth, and two days later, when I lit the fire, the cloth suddenly turned into a fireball, and it burned to the point that there was only a little rag head left, such a large piece of cloth! ”

"I pondered for a long time, only to find that if I soaked the cotton cloth in a mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid, after drying, as long as it touched the open flame, it could be completely burned with a bang. The cotton cloth is too ordinary, and I don't plan to try cotton to make it. If it does, then give it to Joseph and let him play tricks to deceive people, which is another miracle! Seeing that the results of his experiments had been ruined by Hong Tao, Bush did not dare to object, and told Hong Tao about the process of his discovery of nitrocellulose, and finally added a miracle to try to persuade Hong Tao to let him continue playing.

"Alas...... You've robbed Mirad, and now you're robbing Schoenbein's work, and you'll have to grab more in the future, so that these big men will be mixed up after they are born! Looking at Bush's expectant face, Hong Tao knew that he couldn't stop it. Unless Bush is killed right now, as soon as he leaves here, he will still have to tinker with these things.

For a person like Bush, what you say to him about poison, explosions, dangers, and so on will not only fail to deter him, but will also result in the opposite. He wasn't interested in anything harmless, and the more others didn't dare to touch or get it, the more they had to try.

"Who are these people that the master is talking about? Is it your new apprentice? Bush felt that he could take credit for being able to take credit for the laboratory, including the chemical laboratory set up by the empire in Jinhe City.

"Leave them alone, don't you want to know what this thing is? It's called cotton wool, and it can do a lot of things. However, as far as the current conditions are concerned, the most reliable thing is to replace black gunpowder as the firing charge of guns. Child, you have discovered something extremely powerful, with which the master can make a rifle that can kill a man a few miles away, and a cannon with a shell thicker than your waist. However, it is not enough to soak it in a mixture of double acids, and we still have to do a lot of work to make it so that it will not explode anytime and anywhere. Rather than trying to stop Bush from doing it, and it may not be possible to stop him, it is better to let him understand how to produce cotton wool to be safer.

"Say it, I'll do whatever I want, I'm not afraid!" Bush thought that Hong Tao was scaring him again, and every time he came up with something new, his master was extremely frightened. As a result, as long as you are careful, nothing happens.

"You're not afraid, I'm afraid! Go get a jar of alcohol, and ask for the highest concentration. Today, the master will show you a hand, not only to teach you how to make cotton wool, but also to teach you to make something more fun. This sentence is true, Hong Tao really did not think about Bush's safety completely, he was mainly afraid of hurting himself.

The alcohol that Hong Tao said is only distilled from high-grade liquor by distillation, and the concentration is approximately, probably, and unevenly at about 90 percent. This concentration is enough for wiping utensils to disinfect, diluted to 75% can also be used for skin disinfection, but chemical experiments are not enough, and it is necessary to continue to remove the water in the alcohol to make it close to absolute ethanol.

"Master, put quicklime in the alcohol, can this alcohol still work?" Bush was very puzzled by Hong Tao's approach, how could a good barrel of alcohol and a pile of quicklime powder be mixed together, and the alcohol would be purified? Isn't that a waste?

"When studying chemistry, don't just look at the superficial, believe in what you've learned. I ask you, what is quicklime? Hong Tao understood Bush's doubts, and when he first came into contact with chemistry, he was always blinded by these superficial phenomena.

"Calcium oxide ......" Bush said the chemical name of quicklime without even thinking about it.

"What happens to calcium oxide when it meets water?" Hong Tao continued to ask questions while stirring vigorously in the distillation kettle to fully blend the quicklime and alcohol.

"It's ripe lime...... Calcium hydroxide ...... "This time, Bush hesitated a little before he said the answer, and something seemed to come to mind in his head, but it was not very clear.

"Oh, calcium oxide meets water and turns into calcium hydroxide, what about water? Don't just think about it, come and think while mixing, physical labor can stimulate your brain activity. Hong Tao pulled Bush over, took his place, then lit a cigar and watched Bush exercise vigorously.

"The water is gone...... I see, distillation kettle! Alcohol doesn't react with calcium oxide, does it? You're going to re-distill the alcohol! That's right! I didn't think that there would be no water in the alcohol now! Even if you have, it doesn't matter, put calcium oxide and distill again! If Bush still can't figure out how to purify the alcohol, then Hong Tao is ready to change to another apprentice.

"Then you can get it slowly, remember, it's better not to keep this thing in the house in the future, alcohol vapor is not weaker than gunpowder when it explodes, be careful if you don't want to die." How to distill absolute ethanol, Hong Tao doesn't care, he still has to prepare the following test equipment. Making absolute ethanol is only the first step, and there's something more fun to follow, and that's the goal.

"Master, why is the fractionator so far away?" When Bush had finished distilling and cooling the absolute ethanol, Hong Tao had already set up another set of fractionation equipment in the yard with a three-neck flask, a separating funnel, a beaker, and a glass tube. Bush is no stranger to this set of equipment, but the distance between the heated flask and the cooled beaker is almost two meters.

"This thing is afraid of fire." Hong Tao is actually afraid that this set of distillation equipment is not tightly sealed, and he has been doing this experiment for decades, so he can only rely on his memory to explore, in case it is not right, it is safer to stay away.

"Remember, the flask contains concentrated sulfuric acid, put absolute ethanol into the separating funnel, and heat the concentrated sulfuric acid first. Heat it little by little to stabilize it at about 140 degrees, and then add a small amount of absolute ethanol to it. This step is related to whether we can produce what we need, and if the temperature is too high, reaching more than 170 degrees, it will become another kind of thing, called ethylene. Hong Tao simply handed over the work of operating the experimental equipment to Bush, and he stood behind him and commanded with his mouth.

First, Bush is more proficient in playing this set of things than himself, and second, if something really goes wrong, Bush can help him block it in front of him. His safety is always not as important as his own, and at a critical time, he can only die and not die.

Bush couldn't have imagined that such a master behind him was so filthy in his heart, and he also rushed to the supreme glory of the master's ability to teach himself to do experiments by hand, and his little face was flushed with excitement, and his mind was a little chaotic, and he was a little in a hurry to operate these familiar experimental equipment.

"Stop, stop...... You forgot to move the alcohol lamp just now, the temperature is a bit high. You see, those gases should be liquid in the pipes, and if they are so far away, they are still gases, which is ethylene. You see, the bottom of the flask is a little blackened, which is because the temperature is too high and it has carbonized. Within a few minutes, Hong Tao stopped the test, and this time it failed!

"Don't be like your dead father, it's normal for the experiment to fail, go and dispose of these reactive acids, and then rebuild the equipment, and come again!" Hong Tao also did not dare to guarantee that he would do better than Bush if he did it, because now there is no electric stove, and it is difficult to control the temperature because it is heated by an alcohol lamp.

Didn't later generations say that failure is the mother of success, Hong Tao and Bush did not look for this mother too much, not too little, three times, and finally met the requirements for the fourth time, and met this mother, oh, no, it is this liquid.

(To be continued.) )