radron33,
Yes we are very critical here about spelling and grammar.
We do expect members to do their best to insure what the post is readable. This helps, not only for us to show a more personal professional approach as refiners, but also helps us to be understood by other members, many of which have to translate.
Our spelling mistake may not only make it hard for others to understand what we are saying, but could actually get someone hurt, little things are important, one letter in a word can make a big difference. Especially where you are discussing chemistry, look at these words sulfate, sulfite and sulfide, very different chemicals one of which can produce a very dangerous gas when acidified, if I was discussing a procedure and used the wrong spelling in it, I could hurt someone by using the wrong word or spelling. For these reasons and more we do prompt all readers to do their best to correct spelling and grammar, and do the best they can, not all of us have the ability to get good grades in grammar, or can win a spelling Bee, but we can try our best and use spell check.
radron33,
We all are working with extremely dangerous chemicals, when you cannot even use the correct word for the chemical your using this leaves one who reads your post to wonder if you know what you are talking about, or if you have studied enough to even know what you are doing and can do it safely, this can make members think they should not tell you something that you may not understand if they spent the time to answer a question, thinking you have not spent enough time to study the basic principles and safety.
We all make spelling mistakes and grammar errors, but we all also should try to put our best foot forward, use spell check programs if we need to, and work to do our best.
I think you can understand this, as long as you do not let your pride get in the way.
I have seen gold precipitate as a gold color metal instead of the smaller brown crystals of gold metal, believe it has something to do with how the gold is reduced.
Precipitation starts out with a gold ion getting back its lost electron, precipitation can actually happen in less than 0.1 second with billions of these gold ions being reduced (gaining electrons) at the same time, into gold atoms, first forming atoms of gold, these atoms clashing and combining to form invisible colloidal gold particles, forming colloids of gold particles as these gold ion change back to gold atoms and these atoms bumping into each and combining with each other forming clusters of gold colloidal particles, taking billions of atoms in one cluster to make one gold colloidal particle, and billions of these colloidal partials floating around in solution bumping into each other colliding and growing to larger colloids, until they grow to a crystal of gold getting large enough to sink to the bottom of the beaker by gravity.
The gold atoms and colloids or crystals are neutral (non polarized) this allows them to combine (crash together and join together to form a bigger particle, to grow as the move around in solution until they are overcome by gravity and sink to the bottom as precipitated gold,
If as these gold atoms forming combine to form colloids, and the conditions in solution make these colloids become polarized (impurity's, tin in solution) as ions attach themselves to these neutral gold atoms forming into colloidal clusters, (these impurity's or even other ions in solution) can attach themselves to these colloidal clusters in the outer shell forming, these other Ions can be polarized, (positive or negative) depending on conditions, let say our colloidal cluster forming begin to get outer shells of positive ions.
Now our gold colloidal clusters will stop growing and will not become larger crystals, because these colloidal particles become polarized by the polarized ions of their outer shell, now these colloids being polarized begin to repel each other (same polarity will not come together forming crystals) millions of these colloidal gold particles pushing each other around in solution not getting bigger, keeping each other in solution, and in motion so that they never grow large enough to precipitate, by forming crystals large enough for gravity to sink them, leaving your gold basically invisible to the eye.
Note light reflection may detect these colloids if large enough to color the solution with the reflected light particles, as in the case of the colors we see in colloidal gold solutions, for example in our test for gold where we purposely make colloidal gold, using a tin chloride solution with our gold solutions forming the purple of Cassius in our test for gold ions in solution.
Also note in this solution of colloidal gold, in which the gold is already reduced, gold particles clusters of gold atoms formed into colloids (and these polarized colloids repelling each other), this means the gold is already reduced to metal, with these gold atoms having all of there missing electrons back, and these colloidal polarized clusters repelling each other. This means that even though we cannot see the gold or the colloids, we also cannot test for the gold in this solution (our stannous chloride test we use, will not work to reduce the gold ion (the gold is already reduced) and will not form gold colloids the size needed to give the reflected purple color (different sizes of colloids reflect light differently giving different colors depending on size), we cannot precipitate the gold, we cannot test for the gold to see where it is, we cannot filter these colloids from solution (they are way too small), basically this is where a good portion of our gold can be lost, with dirty solutions or with tin in solutions of our refining operations.
I have precipitated gold that looked like tiny gold flakes its rare but will happen, it would have to be because of how the gold atoms grew into crystals of combined gold atoms.
I hope this helps, and I also hope you do the best you can with your spelling and grammar, I do the best I can with mine.
PS: An attitude does not go far on this forum, it is one thing that can cause a member to lose his right as a member here, especially one towards a well and respected member like GSP, and a disrespectful attitude towards one of the moderators.
I think you will find this forum a great place to learn from, and make good friends on, if this is what you enjoy, it would be a shame to mess that up over a little pride on being asked to spell the acid we use the best you can.
