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A sand bath is a common piece of laboratory equipment made from a container filled with heated
A sand bath is a common piece of laboratory equipment made from a container filled with heated sand
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...
. It is used to evenly heat another container, most often during a chemical reaction
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the IUPAC nomenclature for organic transformations, chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the pos ...
.
A sand bath is most commonly used in conjunction with a hot plate
A hot plate is a portable self-contained tabletop small appliance cooktop that features one or more electric heating elements or gas burners. A hot plate can be used as a stand-alone appliance, but is often used as a substitute for one of the b ...
or heating mantle
A heating mantle, or isomantle, is a piece of laboratory equipment used to apply heat to containers, as an alternative to other forms of heated bath. In contrast to other heating devices, such as hotplates or Bunsen burners, glassware containe ...
. A beaker is filled with sand or metal pellets (called shot
Shot may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Shot'' (album), by The Jesus Lizard
*''Shot, Illusion, New God'', an EP by Gruntruck
*'' Shot Rev 2.0'', a video album by The Sisters of Mercy
* "Shot" (song), by The Rasmus
* ''Shot'' (2017 f ...
) and is placed on the plate or mantle. The reaction vessel
A chemical reactor is an enclosed volume in which a chemical reaction takes place. In chemical engineering, it is generally understood to be a process vessel used to carry out a chemical reaction, which is one of the classic unit operations in chem ...
is then partially covered by sand or pellets. The sand or shot then conducts the heat from the plate to all sides of the reaction vessel.
This technique allows a reaction vessel to be heated throughout with minimal stirring, as opposed to heating the bottom of the vessel and waiting for convection
Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the convec ...
to heat the remainder, cutting down on both the duration of the reaction and the possibility of side reactions that may occur at higher temperatures.
A variation on this theme is the water bath in which the sand is replaced with water. It can be used to keep a reaction vessel at the temperature of boiling water until all water is evaporated (see Standard enthalpy change of vaporization
The enthalpy of vaporization (symbol ), also known as the (latent) heat of vaporization or heat of evaporation, is the amount of energy (enthalpy) that must be added to a liquid substance to transform a quantity of that substance into a gas. T ...
).
Sand baths are one of the oldest known pieces of laboratory equipment, having been used by the alchemists
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
. In Arabic alchemy
Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world refers to both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry (the early chemical investigation of nature in general) by Science in medieval Islam, Muslim scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The ...
, a sand bath was known as a ''qadr''. Georges C. Anawati, "Arabic alchemy", p. 868, in In Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
alchemy, a sand bath was called ''balneum siccum'', ''balneum cineritium'', or ''balneum arenosum''.
See also
*Heat bath
In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is al ...
* Water bath
*Oil bath
An oil bath is a type of heated bath used in a laboratory, most commonly used to heat up chemical reactions. It's essentially a container of oil that is heated by a hot plate or (in rare cases) a Bunsen burner.
Use
These baths are commonly used ...
Notes
References
* *{{Citation , last1=Rashed , first1=Roshdi , last2=Morelon , first2=Régis , year=1996 , title=Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science
The ''Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science'' is a three-volume encyclopedia covering the history of Arabic contributions to science, mathematics and technology which had a marked influence on the Middle Ages in Europe. It is written by in ...
, publisher=Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
, isbn=0-415-12410-7
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20110604144037/http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HistSciTech/HistSciTech-idx?type=turn&entity=HistSciTech000900240229&isize=L Laboratory equipment Thermodynamics Alchemical tools