Aqua regia
Appearance
Aqua regia (latin for "royal water") is a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and concentrated hydrochloric acid. It is one of the few reagents able to dissolve gold and platinum.
When the Nazis invaded Denmark, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia and placed this reagent on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid.
Note: Aqua Regia should not be confused with acquaragia which is more commonly known as turpentine in English and is a completely different substance from Aqua Regia.
Cites for the Nobel Medal story:
- http://www.nobel.se/nobel/medals/
- http://home.inforamp.net/~hkaplan/VirtualSongbook/TheSolution.pdf (a cite, set to music!)