it. The steam, coming into contact with the iron, gives up its oxygen to it, and thus the hydrogen is set free and passes out at the other end of the tube together with undecomposed steam. > This method, which is historically very significant,12 is practically inconvenient, as it requires a rather
Further, this reaction, as a reversible one (a red-hot mass of iron decomposes a current of steam, forming oxide and hydrogen; and a mass of oxide of iron, heated to redness in a stream of hydrogen, forms iron and steam), does not proceed in virtue of the comparatively small difference between the affinity of oxygen for iron (or zinc) and for hydrogen, but only because the hydrogen escapes, as it is formed, in virtue of its elasticity.13
If the oxygen compounds—that is, the oxides—which are obtained from the iron or zinc, be able to pass into solution, then the affinity acting in solution is added, and the reaction may become non-reversible, and proceed with comparatively much greater facility.14
As the oxides of iron and zinc, by themselves insoluble in water, are capable of combining with (have an affinity for) acid oxides (as we shall afterwards fully consider), and form saline and soluble substances, with acids, or hydrates having acid properties, hence by the action of such hydrates, or of their aqueous solutions,15 iron and zinc are able to liberate hydrogen with great ease at the ordinary temperature—that is, they act on solutions of acids just as sodium acts on water.16
Sulphuric acid, H2SO4, is usually chosen for this purpose; the hydrogen is displaced from it by many metals with much greater facility than directly from water, and such a displacement is accompanied by the evolution of a large amount of heat.17
When the hydrogen in sulphuric acid is replaced by a metal, a substance is obtained which is called a salt of sulphuric acid or a sulphate.
Thus, by the action of zinc on sulphuric acid, hydrogen and zinc sulphate ZnSO4,18 are obtained. The latter is a solid substance, soluble in water.
In order that the action of the metal on the acid should go on regularly, and to the end, it is necessary that the acid should be diluted with water, which dissolves the salt as it is formed; otherwise the salt covers the metal, and hinders the acid from attacking it. Usually the acid is diluted with from three to five times its volume of water, and the metal is covered with this solution.
In order that the metal should act rapidly on the acid, it should present a large surface, so that a maximum amount of the reacting substances may come into contact in a given time.
For this purpose the zinc is used as strips of sheet zinc, or in the granulated form (that is, zinc which has been poured from a certain height, in a molten state, into water).
The iron should be in the form of wire, nails, filings, or cuttings.