Re: Cyanide and almonds

Eugene Robkin (erobkin@uwc.edu)
Tue, 03 Feb 1998 13:58:08 -0600

Silver compounds plus alkali, ammonia being the most common, make nasty
sensitive uncontrollable stuff than can be set off by ants crawling on the
worktable. This may explain the hypersensitization of film by exposure to
ammonia vapor. The ammonia with an insoluble halide just does not make
very much of the bad stuff and it is dispersed and usually in the dark.
Light causes energy release which increases the developability of the
silver grains. This later is just an idea, the big bang potential from
mixing actual solutions is very real as in there are very few successful
blind photographers, alt or otherwise.

There is a previous posting on this in the archive that includes some
comments from someone on a chemistry or pyrotechnics newsgroup.

If you want to go surfing for this subject look under silver fulminates or
fulminating silver. They are not the same but usually lumped together.

Do not try to confirm by actual experiment, you will at least make the
local news.

I do hope I've been sufficiently discouraging here.

Eugene Robkin

At 02:26 PM 2/3/98 -0500, Donald Cardwell wrote:
>What can we suppose caused Alec Guiness, as the enthusiatic amateur
>photographer, to be blown up in Kind Hearts and Coronets ?
>
>Something suitable for Victorian gentry ...
>
>Don
>
>