"Kaliumsulfit - Lsg. 45%" in German - what's that in English?

Trask · Nov 7, 2007

I have a formula for Rodinal Special SB in German that I found on the web some time ago, during the time that RS was no longer being produced (it's now back in production, I read). The formula calls for Kaliumsulfit -- Lsg.45%, which I read as Potassium Sulfite. Unfortunately, I cannot find anyone who sells it or even any reference to it existing -- Potassium Metabisulfite, yes, but Potassium Sulfite, no.

Anyone who has photochemical experience in German out there who can tell me what is needed?

FYI, the other components are Potassium Bromide, Triethanolamin, Hydroquinone, Phenidone and EDTA -- plus some water, of course.

Photo Engineer · Nov 7, 2007

Potassium Sulfite at 45% in water.

It is available at that concentration from many chemical companies. I believe that you can get it from the Photographers Formulary for one.

PE

MikeSeb · Nov 7, 2007

Interesting that the German and Latin names for potassium are identical. I never studied German, though I had my fill and beyond of Latin.

Does the German language borrow heavily from Latin? Makes sense if so, given the mingling of Roman and German in the late Republic and Empire.

Completely off topic, sorry...

Photo Engineer · Nov 7, 2007

The names of the early known elements in most languages are taken from Latin Mike. The exception is English, and so Kalium is used in German and Japanese. Natrium is used everywhere for Sodium.

AAMOF, the chemcial symbols are taken from the original Latin names, so Na for Sodium and K for Potassium. Our names come from "Soda Ash" and "Potash" in English.

BTW, one person once argued that Agfa did not use Potassium Iodide in a specific emulsion formula, but there it was, KJ, the German symbols for KI in English.

PE

walter23 · Nov 7, 2007

MikeSeb said:
Does the German language borrow heavily from Latin? Makes sense if so, given the mingling of Roman and German in the late Republic and Empire.

My wife says the grammar is remarkably close (she was talking about this the other night as she's learning German right now). I don't know either myself.

Mick Fagan · Nov 8, 2007

As I understand it, Italic spawned Latin, which then gave us:-
Italian, French, Provencal, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Romanian.

Germanic spawned north Germanic and west Germanic. Nth Germanic has most, if not all Scandinavian languages under the sub headings, East Norse and West Norse.

West Germanic gave us High German, which morphed into Yiddish and German. Low German was another branch which gave us old and modern Frisian, Middle Dutch, Dutch and Flemish. Old Saxon is another branch which gives us middle, low German and Platt Deutsch. The Anglo Saxon arm gives us middle and modern English.

Source:- Webster's unabridged dictionary, second edition. As this source is close to 30 years old (at least my dictionary) things could have changed somewhat, though I doubt it.

Mick.

johnnywalker · Nov 8, 2007

walter23 said:
My wife says the grammar is remarkably close (she was talking about this the other night as she's learning German right now). I don't know either myself.

One exception is that in German you never know who did what to whom until you reach the end of the sentence, where all the verbs reside! At least it seemed that way to me when I took it 45 years ago.

AgX · Nov 8, 2007

I'm living on Roman soil.

(Referring to their military-industrial complex; though archeologists don't like that sort of reference...)

AgX · Nov 8, 2007

johnnywalker said:
One exception is that in German you never know who did what to whom until you reach the end of the sentence, where all the verbs reside!

Well, it depends on the chosen structure:

Der Hund beißt den Mann. (The dog bites the dog.)
Der Mann beißt den Hund. (the opposite meaning)

However,

Der Hund beißt den Mann.
Den Mann beißt der Hund. (both have the same meaning)

You can change positions with the articles still hinting at the subject/object relation.
You wouldn't be able to do that in Dutch/Flemish.

Mateo · Nov 8, 2007

I think Johnny was refering to something like the following sentence where you just don't know where things are going until the end.

Wie wilst Du deine Eier am morgen haben?

georgegrosu · Nov 8, 2007

http://www.inorganics.basf.com/p02/...Produktinformationen/Kaliumsulfit-Loesung_45P
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcsnfrn/nfrn1200.html

Molar mass of Potassium Sulfite (K2SO3) = 158.26 g/mol.
Molar mass of Sodium Sulfite (Na2SO3) = 126.06 g/mol.
I thing you can substitute Potassium Sulfite with Sodium Sulfite on the rapport of molar mass.

156.26 g Potassium Sulfite ……………….126.06 g Sodium Sulfite
your quantity (grams) of Potassium Sulfite ………. X quantity (grams) of Sodium Sulfite

I use this with sodium Sodium Hydroxide and Potassium Hydroxide,
Potassium Carbonate, Anhydrous and Sodium Carbonate.
George

Ole · Nov 8, 2007

That substitution works in most cases, but sometimes the one has been chosen over the other due to differences in solubility. So you may find that you can substitute when mixing working solutions, but not stock solutions...

AgX · Nov 8, 2007

Mateo said:
I think Johnny was refering to something like the following sentence where you just don't know where things are going until the end.

Wie wilst Du deine Eier am morgen haben?

Yes, Mateo,

I didn’t think of that.

We place the verbum at the end of the sentence in some time forms. However, not commonly in the present tense. Which is done in Dutch however…

This all is quite complicated; and I’m mumbling anyway.

Struan Gray · Nov 8, 2007

Useless tidbit: the Swedish word for the element "tungsten" is "wolfram", despite the fact that "tungsten" is in fact a Swedish word.

P C Headland · Nov 8, 2007

johnnywalker said:
One exception is that in German you never know who did what to whom until you reach the end of the sentence, where all the verbs reside! At least it seemed that way to me when I took it 45 years ago.

Yes, the other joke is that volume 2 of the German edition includes the verbs

Ed Sukach · Nov 8, 2007

Struan Gray said:
Useless tidbit: the Swedish word for the element "tungsten" is "wolfram", despite the fact that "tungsten" is in fact a Swedish word.

Yes ... and the chemical symbol is "W".

Tungsten: "heavy stone" - which it certainly IS.

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2007

Well, for a good laugh, read Mark Twain's "That Awful German Language" in which he writes some of it in English with German sentence structure, and so in the essay his heroine leaves home and de from the station parted. (separation of prefix and verb), and his stork on the chimney is fun too in the same article.

For my German class, two of us translated Le Chanson de Roland directly from French to German. That was a real hoot. And, for graduate school I had to translate 25 pages of the Fischer Lexicon into English from German.

Back to sodium and potassium salts now.......

Potassium sulfite is very very soluable compared to sodium sulfite. In fact, you cannot make a 45% sodium sulfite solution! In addition, the ionic strength is different between potassium and sodium salts, diffusion is different and effects on silver halide solubility are very different.

In fact, potassium salts render silver halides so insoluable (in a simple sense) that they can stop the action of hypo in a fix so never use potassium or calcium thiosulfate in a fix.

In any event, a developer with all potassium salts behaves differently than one with sodium salts as to development rate and curve shape. I have done the experiment quantitatively.

Also, generally, potassium salts are more expensive in the US than Europe and Sodium salts are more expensive in Europe than the US. That is a generalization but is related to the huge soda ash deposits in the southwest of the US.

PE

gainer · Nov 8, 2007

PE, I think you meant "heroine", not "heroin".

If all you are concerned about is ionic concentration, a 36% solution of sodium sulfite has as many ions as a 45% solution of potassium sulfite. I haven't looked to see if 36% is possible.

A German wind tunnel is a luftfahrtbildnung IIRC from my NASA days.

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2007

Thanks Patrick, I've fixed my drug indued error. I'm still not awake today, but I'm not sure, as I'm not awake.

And, a translation program converted the Russian for "hydraulic ram" to "wet male sheep" in English, much to our delight.

PE

GeorgK · Nov 8, 2007

Just for the record: "Pottasche" is also used in German and means potassium carbonate, which was produced in a "Pott" (pot) from "Asche" (ash); you can see, almost the same as in English. BTW, only in the north they use the word "Pott", while here in the south we say "Topf".

"Wolfram" (the same both in German and Swedish) was named by an alchemist in the 16th century, who found a mineral which forcefully turned melted tin into slag ("eats it like a wolf") and called this mineral "lupus sumi" (latin), which means "Wolf-Rahm" in German or "wolf-cream" in English.

I really like this old-fashioned way to name things both in chemistry and biology so much more than the modern, quite unimaginative names.

Georg

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2007

Lets discuss Phlogiston theory then.

PE

gainer · Nov 8, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
Thanks Patrick, I've fixed my drug indued error. I'm still not awake today, but I'm not sure, as I'm not awake.

And, a translation program converted the Russian for "hydraulic ram" to "wet male sheep" in English, much to our delight.

PE

Sort of reminds me of the newspaper that attempted to correct a typo:"We apologize for the statement that Mr. Jones is a defective in the police force. We should have said that Mr. Jones is a detective in the police farce."

Trask · Nov 8, 2007

Well, I'd like to thank everyone for helping me understand what Kaliumsulfit is (even if I'll have a hard time finding it), and I'm glad my thread gave all you German linguists a chance to trot your stuff! Can't speak a word of it myself, despite being 3/4 German in terms of lineage. French, yes, Arabic, some, German, zilch (which, for all I know is a German word -- sounds like it to me!)

And a propos of nothing, I read a good spy-type book a while back, with a title something like "the windows of Lisbon" or some such, in which the plot circulated around German military efforts to get wolfram from Portugal to Germany during WWII. Prior to reading this, I'd not know that Portugal was at that time a source for tungsten -- assuming the author didn't make the whole thing up!

"Kaliumsulfit - Lsg. 45%" in German - what's that in English?

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