0 Responses to “last one, I promise. (I hope.)”

  1. Anonymous

    By itself, silver nitrate is nonvolatile at room temperature. However, it is almost never pure; for example, the old treatment of silver nitrate for infant eye infections was a 1.5% solution in a rather smelly ointment.

    • Marie Brennan

      This is silver nitrate for photographic purposes, so it’s presumably pure (before it gets mixed with the other chemicals in the process).

      • zunger

        Wikipedia Sez, again: “When making photographic film, silver nitrate is treated with halide salts of sodium or potassium to form insoluble silver halide in situ in photographic gelatin, which is then applied to strips of tri-acetate or polyester.”

        That should all be pretty odorless. It might taste like salty gelatin if you ate it, (due to the halides from the salts, not due to the silver nitrate itself) but being toxic and corrosive that would probably not be wise.

  2. rosa_g

    Silver nitrate in itself doesn’t have a smell, regardless of its concentration in aqueous (water solution) form. If mixed with alcohol, then the alcohol in which it is diluted has a smell.

    In any form, it does leave a nasty brown stain on your fingers if you spill any of the solution on yourself however. I’ve done that MANY times when preparing chem labs! 😉

  3. shui_long

    No.

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