Daily Archives: December 11, 2014

Silvers of Silver Lab

1.Once we put the silver nitrate onto the copper I immediately saw the copper start to change and dissolve with the &silver& taking its place. Without looking in the microscope I saw &silver& appearing in the middle where the silver nitrate was more prominent, It looked very shiny and sleek. However once I looked in the microscope the &silver& did not look solid persay it almost looked furry, it ressembled alot like the branches of trees. It almost looked like the &silver& was growing branches from the middle, the middle was solid but the farther you went out the furrier it got.

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2.The shiny grey material is the &silver& that is forming while the copper is disolving. The &silver& was formed from the chemical reaction between the copper and the silver nitrate. Once the nitrate touched the copper he chemical reaction started and it started tp transforme into &silver&.

3. From my understanding I believe it turns blue because the silver nitrate was stripping (and dissolving) the copper, and sometimes when you look and metal it has a bluey look to it. So I think that it was the stripping from the copper that turned the liquid blue.

4. In my view I do not think that alchemy is real due to the fact that if it was real everyone would be rich. They would just take copper and transform it using all these different chemicals, copper would soon be exstinct and we would all have a bunch of gold and silver. Also silver is formed on its own and not in a lab, so trying to replicate silver by using multiple different materials would be impossible. Its almost like when you gain muscle naturally, you work out and gain the muscle, but when you take steroids you do gain muscle but its not the same ind of muscle and it does not grow properl.

5.The part of the Lab that I liked the most was when you could see the chemical reaction forming infront of your eyes you could see the &silver& that was forming and you could tell that the copper was dissolving. This helps my understanding for chemical reactions because it really shows me how two different types of elements (copper and silver nitrate) can combine and create a completly new element (silver).