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oozing on the muggy shore of the gulf coast
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From: <[email protected]>
> Hi guys,
>
> Regarding the following post, I'm not sure if I should address this
to
> Tia-Pan or Bob-Lee but here goes:
Well, I'm not Bob but I do qualify as a guy.
I can answer some of the definitions for you.
Colloidal silver:
The definition of a colloidal system is "small 'particles' of one
substance distributed more or less uniformly throughout another. This
latter phase is continuous whilst the 'particles' are discontinuous.
The continuous phase may be a gas, liquid, or solid whilst the
discontinuous phase may also be a gas, liquid or solid. The system
will be colloidal if the 'particles' are sufficiently small and that
usually means less than about 1um in at least one important
dimension." - Introduction to Modern Colloid Science...Hunter.
Whilst colloidal silver systems, properly called silver sols or
colloidal sols, approach the dimensions of true solutions and exhibit
little or no difference from true solutions, they are regarded as
colloidal if the size of the particle falls between 1 - 1000 nm
(0.001 - 1.0 um).
So you can see that being colloidal does not refer at all to the
valence state of the dispersed particles, that is, the particles may
be charged or not.
Typically colloidal silver particles are charged, and therefore are
ionic in one sense of the term, and may comprise of flocks of
monatomic ions or a mixture of monatomic ions and metallic atoms.
The aggrigation of particles into flocks is a complex interaction of
opposing forces:
Van de Waals force is a long range attractive force occuring between
any two particles of the same material and is present in all lyophobic
sols. The electrostatic repulsion which opposes aggrigation, and the
attractive force which acts to bind particles together if they come
into close enough contact, is explained by the DLVO theory.
By the way, it seems that metallic sols aggrigate into fractal
arrangements, which means that there will be definite steps in
increasing size, each step being relatively stable. Also I have just
read some papers which seem to imply that transition metals cannot
exist as single free monatomic ions unless complexed, the smallest
free particle being a diatom (two atoms).
Hope this helps.
Ivan.
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