* A few old (not shiny) pennies
* 1/4 cup white vinegar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* Non-metal bowl
* Paper towels
What to do...
- Pour the vinegar into the bowl and add the salt - stir it up.
- Put about 5 pennies into the bowl and count to 10 slowly.
- Take out the pennies and rinse them out in some water. Admire their shininess!
There is some pretty fancy chemistry going on in that little bowl of yours. It turns out that vinegar is an acid, and the acid in the vinegar reacts with the salt to remove what chemists call copper oxide which was making your pennies dull. You're not done yet, though, lets try another experiment:
Add more pennies to the bowl for 10 seconds, but this time , don't rinse them off. Place them on a paper towel to dry off. In time the pennies will turn greenish-blue as a chemical called malachite forms on your pennies. But wait, your still not done yet.
Place some nuts and bolts in the vinegar and watch - they become COPPER in color! The vinegar removed some copper from the pennies and that copper was attracted by to the metal in the nuts and bolts - cool.
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