Word: nitric
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...every night, is the most explosive city in India. Murderous riots can be touched off by anything from a trifling rise in streetcar fares to the throat-cutting religious strife that killed thousands in 1946. Calcutta rioters have even perfected their own secret weapon: electric-light bulbs filled with nitric acid...
Alone, neither hydrochloric nor nitric acid will dissolve the "noble metals" gold and platinum, but a mixture of the two will. So to this potent corrosive the medieval alchemists gave the name aqua regia-royal water. Last week in Brooklyn, fumes from royal water knocked out scores of factory workers and firemen. left several in hospitals, threatened with severe aftereffects...
...Williamsburg section, an American Cyanamid Co. tank truck backed up to the Radio Receptor Co.'s plant (which makes electronic equipment) to deliver 500 gallons of nitric acid. Driver Benjamin Sidla hooked up his hose to a pipe indicated by employees, started pumping. After a few minutes, a man rushed up from the basement, yelled to Sidla: "You'd better stop. The fumes are terrible down there." Somehow the nitric acid had been diverted into a 3,000-gallon tank containing hydrochloric. Result: royal water, which was already beginning to dissolve the tank's rubber lining, eating...
...warhead, took off the old trigger and its brackets, replaced them with a new trigger and brackets. Somewhere in that process on the fourth missile there was a mishap. Suddenly the missile blew with a roar and a sky-searing pillow of orange flame from burning kerosene and nitric acid fuels. After the eight missiles had gone up, quick-thinking Lieut. Robert F. Daly, the battery commander, dashed out of his office, ordered the remaining Nikes dropped by elevator to their 20-ft deep concrete storage pits...
...debate in the industry today, much like the old argument over air-cooled v. liquid-cooled engines, is over solid rocket propellants v. liquid rocket propellants. Most big rockets, including both Intercontinental and two of the three Intermediate-Range missiles, now use liquid fuels with an oxidizer such as nitric acid or hydrogen peroxide. Liquid systems have produced the highest thrust-weight ratio (80 Ibs. for each i Ib. of weight), but they require an enormously complex system of tanks, valves, pumps and generators. To feed and control its monster engines North American must have pumps capable...