Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/440

 Why Cotton Is Contraband of War

By Hudson Maxim

���Cotton : It will make a shirt to hide your nakedness or blast a subway to make transportation easier

��COTTON happens to be the best combustible element to combine chemically with nitric acid so as to produce a high explosive, and also to serve as the principal ingredient for the manufacture of smokeless powder.

A bale of cotton may, therefore, be considered a bale of guncotton in embryo.

There are many kinds of nitrocellu- lose, depending upon the so-called de- gree or character of nitration, that is to say, upon the way in which it is treated with nitric acid and the strength of the nitric acid.

When ordinary cotton is immersed in nitric acid, the cotton absorbs oxygen from the nitric acid, but not as free oxygen, because the oxygen is taken up in com])ination with nitrogen. But the weight of the oxygen absorbed is much in excess of the weight of nitrogen, the nitrogen acting merely as a carrier of the oxygen. The appearance of the cotton is not changed to any appreciable

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