Nountaineer
Well-known member
My mining engineer/ chemist friend once told me I almost blew myself up when I added ethyl alcohol to Mercury dissolved in strong nitric acid. A puff of smoke came out of the beaker and it started boiling rapidly. The alcohol was for smelling salts type of use because it also had ammonia in it. My friend didn't know what effect the ammonia had on that reaction. Can anyone here tell me what effect it had on it?