publius said:
Any source of carbon (from what I can find in my research) could be used. I assume cellulose would also work. I can't see using something as expensive as honey for this process.
This is an old post but I can't see anyone commenting on this yet.
Carbon is very inert at room temperature so it won't work. There is a huge difference between carbon and it's compounds. To turn silver oxide into silver at room temperature we need something that can work as a reducer at that temperature.
Karo syrup is a glucose syrup so it contains glucose, a reducing sugar. The common white sugar we use is not a reducing sugar, it's made up of sucrose so it should not work as well as the reducing sugars. But if Kadriver is using table sugar with good results it might somehow work anyway or it might be a mixture of different types of sugar.
On the other hand, sucrose is made up of a linked glucose and fructose molecule so it might break down and react with the silver oxide in the same way as glucose does. The silver oxide mixed with sodium hydroxide and heated by the reactions is a quite aggressive chemical environment.
As a side note, reducing sugars are called so when they have a free aldehyde or ketone group.
Ref.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_syrup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_sugar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar
Göran