Sil Horwitz (silh@iag.net)
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 18:30:15 -0400
At 99/04/20 05:04 PM -0400, you wrote:
>I wonder if British "paraffin" is American "mineral oil"?
British "paraffin" is what we Americans call "kerosene." That is not my
opinion, it's what the authority (Merck's Index) states that. That doesn't mean
that common usage couldn't be anything in the aliphatic series! To be specific,
you need the chemical formula, which I pointed out in my message. Mineral oil
is another one of those ambiguous compounds that can be a mixture of a number
of chemicals. And then there's high viscosity mineral oil and low viscosity
mineral oil. Give the chemical makeup and then it's possible to name exactly
what the compound is.
(The only way I can relate this to alt-photo is that there is the same problem
with compound mixtures such as iron oxalates and citrates - there's no chemical
difference, for example, between the green and brown citrates; it's just how
the molecules are configured, but as we all know, that different configuration
can make a big difference.)
Sil Horwitz, FPSA
Technical Editor, PSA Journal
silh@iag.net
Visit http://www.psa-photo.org/
Personal page: http://www.iag.net/~silh/
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