Hydrolysis with hydrochloric acid or baryta water gives tropic acid and tropine; on the other hand, by boiling equimolecular quantities of these substances with dilute hydrochloric acid, atropine is reformed.
Chloride of lime or "bleaching powder" is a calcium chlorhypochlorite or an equimolecular mixture of the chloride and hypochlorite (see Alkali Manufacture and Bleaching).
Absence of rotary power when asymmetric carbon atoms are present, may be caused by an internal compensation within the molecule as with the inactive tartaric acid (mesotartaric acid), or may be due to the fact that the compound is an equimolecular mixture of leftand right-hand varieties, this being the case with racemic acid that was broken by Louis Pasteur into laevoand dextro-tartaric acid (see Stereo-Isomerism).
Balard discovered chlorine monoxide in 1834, investigating its properties and reactions; and his observations on hypochlorous acid and hypochlorites led him to conclude that " bleaching-powder " or " chloride of lime " was a compound or mixture in equimolecular proportions of calcium chloride and hypochlorite, with a little calcium hydrate.
Neumann, who, in 1831, deduced from observations on many carbonates (calcium, magnesium, ferrous, zinc, barium and lead) that stoichiometric quantities (equimolecular weights) of compounds possess the same heat capacity.