I'm looking to intrigue my youngest sibling with a little shiny silver, made from adding copper metal to silver nitrate. I just wanted to know if the purity/form of copper makes any difference in this particular reaction? I mean, is an alloy fine (like if I just bought some copper foil off the internet) or do I have to go balls to the wall and get some oxygen free stuff?Second, is it fine if I purchase basically pure silver nitrate flakes or would it be better to have a solution (I heard 10 M a lot as far as solutions go)? And yes, I already have the necessary safety equipment to handle silver nitrate!Also, to yield ~1 gram of silver (give or take, since the experiment is on casual terms), about how many mL of silver nitrate should I use (or grams of the flakes), with the copper added in excess?To be honest, I'm sure I could find all these answers on Google, but I really don't want to spend the time dragging through all the not-specific-enough or unrelated results haha. Thanks in advance for the help!
I would recommend pure copper because reactivity of copper is pretty low and most metals react faster than it does I also recommend Silver nitrate solutions .. because they are usually made of recrystallized Silver nitrate ( or re-recrystallized ) 10+ M is good , Tho take good care with handling This is your equation of forming Silver @@ Cu (s) + 2AgNO3 ---> 2Ag + Cu(NO3)2 2AgNO3 ----> 2 moles Ag X moles ----> ( 1 g/ 107.8682 g/mol ) X -----> 9.27x10^-3 moles Ag then you need 9.27x10^-3 moles of AgNO3 let's say 0.01 Mole ;p if you have 10 M , then 10 moles per Litre so each 1ml contains 0.01 mole You should need 1 ml of AgNO3 solution (10M) for each 1 gram of Silver you want to make Hope this helps ...
NaCl + AgNO3 will supply AgCl it quite is a precipitate. Zn + HCl supplies H2 gas Zn + HCL produces warmth and makes the attempt tube warmer The precipitate AgCl in part a million is white and is a colour exchange.
