Lime water



Lime water or milk of lime is the common name for whitewash).

Etymology

  • Middle English lim, from Old English līm, birdlime.

Making lime water

Lime water can be made by adding siphoned off the sediment.

Uses of Lime water

Chemistry

In chemistry, lime water can be used to test the presence of carbon dioxide because lime water reacts with calcium carbonate:

Ca(OH)2 (aq) + CO2 (g) → CaCO3 (s) + H2O (l)

Lime water is also used in fermentation, to determine whether carbon dioxide was produced. When lime water reacts with CO2 it becomes milky.

Medicine

When the old vaudeville style medicine shows promoting various calcium hydrogencarbonate.

CaCO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O(l) \rightarrow Ca(HCO3)2(aq)

The huckster had a patent medicine bottle filled with vinegar or some similar acid. He then would pour some of the acid into the glass of cloudy limewater. The acid reacted with the calcium carbonate, and the water would instantly clear. This demonstrated the potent effect of the nostrum he was selling to eliminate the "disease" demonstrated by the reaction.

Meals

Lime water is also used in the traditional making of Tortilla [1]

Arts

In buon fresco painting, lime water is used as the colour solvent to apply on fresh plaster.

Misc

Lime water is widely used by marine aquarists and is a primary supplement of Calcium concentration in natural seawater is about 420 ppm[2].

When used for this purpose, lime water is also referred to as "kalkwasser".

References

  1. ^ Hambidge KM; Krebs NF, Westcott JL, Sian L, Miller LV, Peterson KL, Raboy V (July 2005). "Absorption of calcium from tortilla meals prepared from low-phytate maize.". The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 82 (1): 84-7. PMID 16002804. Retrieved on 2006-10-02.
  2. ^ A Simplified Guide to the Relationship Between Calcium, Alkalinity, Magnesium and pH.
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lime_water". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.