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 soil texture, textur ...

. It is used to evenly heat another container, most often during a

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the positions of electrons in the forming and break ...

. 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 ...

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 conta ...

. A beaker is filled with sand or metal pellets (called shot) and is placed on the plate or mantle. The reaction vessel 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 c ...

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). 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 Muslim scholars in the medieval Islamic world. The word ''alchemy'' was der ...

, 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 ...

alchemy, a sand bath was called ''balneum siccum'', ''balneum cineritium'', or ''balneum arenosum''.

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References

* *{{Citation , last1=Rashed , first1=Roshdi , last2=Morelon , first2=Régis , year=1996 , title= Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science , 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, ...

, 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

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