Silver - THE MOST REFLECTIVE METAL!

Hello everyone in this video I am going to tell about silver the metal with the highest reflectance And which also has lots of other not less interesting properties Nowadays Silver is mainly seen in jewelry shops or in homeware shops still an extremely expensive cutlery made from this metal however In the beginning of the humankind history things were quite different back in the day people used native silver as currency Along with gold and copper and they were used alongside Each other for a reason: all these metals belong to the group 11 Which is why they possess similar properties such as high density Resistance to oxidation and deposition in the native form It's hard to find the exact date when people began using silver as currency But it is known for sure that it was used as currency in ancient Sumerian cities over 5,000 years ago native silver used back then was quite pure but it would quickly tarnish in the air and wasn't sufficiently hard. That is why first coins were not made from pure silver; rather were made from its naturally-occurring Alloy called electron first coins made from this alloy were used in Lydia Which is a territory located in the modern-day Turkey. As time went on Deposits of electron were running low that is why people figured how to extract silver from its ores. Quite frequently people used also rich in copper, lead, antimony to extract silver which was an impurity in them Basically, not much has changed since then today silver is extracted as a byproduct during mining of copper zinc and lead After purification, Pure silver is a quite dense white and shiny metal I bought such a coin from pure silver weighing one troy ounce and costing 20 euros Such coins are not used as currency rather they are used for investments You won't be able to buy anything from it in a shop besides silver coins Which were used as currency in Europe contained either copper or zinc. Which makes them harder and more resistant to rubbing off pure silver has very interesting properties When touching the coin I can feel how cold it is, which means it has a high thermal conductivity according to reference sources its thermal Conductivity is the highest among all known metals. That is why sometimes Crucibles for melting some metals are made from silver besides having the highest thermal Conductivity silver also has the lowest electrical resistivity that is why it conducts electricity even better than copper does. if [you] hold a powerful neodymium Magnet next to such a coil and then quickly lifted The coin starts following the magnet because of the powerful magnetic fields being created inside it Because of this property of silver and a deficit of copper in the USA during the Second World War Silver was used for making silver wires for powerful electrical magnets used for enriching uranium however in spite of its electromagnetic properties Pure silver itself isn't hard at all. Such a coun can easily be bent with two hands using pliers This is very reason why today all silver generally is made not from pure silver alone But rather from is alloy with 7.5 percent copper such an alloy is much harder than pure silver and It can even be used for making wrist watches and even finest jewelry However adding copper doesn't help to prevent Silver's main disadvantage Tarnishing in the air. The thing is even though silver does react well with oxygen it reacts well with sulfur containing Components present is the air: for instance with hydrogen sulfide that is why is the more gas you release in the room, the quicker your favorite jewelry will tarnish. I also remember when traveling we took a shower in Iceland where water frequently contains hydrogen sulfide and my friend's silver ring tarnished just ten minutes after he had taken a shower. There is one electrochemical trick which can help remove tarnish from silver items I am putting silver spoons into a glass jar on an aluminum foil to make a simplest galvanic couple After that I am making a solution from 20 grams of table salt and 10 grams of baking soda I am soaking the silver spoons in this solution and we can see how quickly the tarnish disappears from the spoons. Here in the simplest galvanic cell aluminum reduces silver is the weak alkali solution Which conducts electrons from one metal to the other very well. As a result after spending an hour in this solution Silver began looking brand new again you can polish spoons with a piece of fabric to give it a nice shine and tada! my cutlery shines like brand-new again Now let us get back to my coin from the spoons. Besides being highly malleable Silver also has a very low melting point Compared to iron that is why I decided to melt a bit of this coin for my next experiments with the help of a regular gas blowtorch Silver drops quickly harden when falling into the water and the coin itself remains as shiny as it had been before. Being heated to a red-hot State the thing is silver oxide forming in the air quickly break down into silver and Oxygen after being heated up which is why this metal almost never covers in an oxide layer in contrast to sulfur-containing compounds Now I'm going to use drops of silver to make a soluble compound of this metal, which is silver nitrate I'm pouring 50 milliliters of Concentrated nitric acid over the silver drops then I'm heating up the mixture to speed up the reaction. silver quickly dissolves in borlik nitric acid releasing reddish-brown nitrogen dioxide vapors and also foreign silver nitrite solution When the reaction ends and the solution cools off their form silver nitrite crystals Which later on I will be separating from the solution and ran off as a result I got very useful reagent which is silver nitrite. For instance, It can be mixed with potassium nitrite or potassium salt Peter and we can get a silver nitrite stick Since all of us have some salt on our skin when silver nitrite touches the skin there forms silver chloride on the surface of tjjhe skin when exposed to light or under influence of reducing chemical silver chloride breaks down into finely divide silver and chlorine just it does on photos of Course such silver nitrate stains don't look nice. That is why it's better to resort to one chemical way of removing them. First you need to wipe the stain with a cotton pad soaked in the iodine solution in order for iodine to react with silver particles and form silver iodide Left over iodine and silver iodide can easily be removed with concentrated sodium thiosulfate solution and applying it with a cotton pad also. A couple of minutes later all stains quickly disappear .After such a procedure You need to wash your hands with soap and apply moisturizing cream, too them in order for your skin not to be dry Since the mid-nineteenth [century], silver compounds have been used in painting and making something We cannot imagine our modern life without. I'm talking about photographs The thing is if you mix silver nitrite with a table salt solution, there will form form a white insoluble sediment silver chloride this compound is Photosensitive which is why it breaks down into finely device silver and gaseous chlorine under the influence of ultraviolet light if you coat a sheet of paper with such a layer of silver chloride and Then cover it with a negative film, uncoated areas of the picture Will grow dark in the light and the coated areas will remain white thus we can print photos like people did 100 years ago, which is something a lot of modern artists and lovers of Alternative photography do. there are two other beautiful ways how you can extract silver from silver nitrate I'm going to show you how to grow beautiful silver crystals. We just need to pour a weak silver nitrate solution Into a container is copper plated. in some time There will grow beautiful metallic silver crystals on the surface of copper and the copper itself will be slowly dissolving. Substituting silver in the solution and I need bright blue The less Silver's there in the solution the bigger silver crystals will grow This looks extremely beautiful Finally, you can make a regular mirror jwe can hardly imagine our life without from silver nitrite To do that first we need to pour some sodium hydroxide into silver nitrite solution Then we need to dissolve the obtained silver oxide in an ammonia solution There will form a transparent silver ammonia solution Which needs to be used as soon as possible because of the explosive silver nitrite Forming in it. If we pour 2 percent of glucose solution into the silver ammonia solution There will start to form a real mirror in the container I poured this solution into a cuvette to clearly demonstrate to you the creation of mirror Glucose here reduces silver from the solution oxidizing into gluconic acid The freshly made finely divided silver sticks to the walls of the cuvette ta glassy surface In itself silver reflects almost all the visible light spectrum That is why it is used to make mirrors. as a result I got a mirror with a quite good reflectance the reduced metal arranged itself into beautiful silver deposits made from drops of colloidal silver stuck together, of course My mirror isn't perfect to make a better quality mirror The fat on the surface needs to be continuously skimmed off, and it needs to be treated with a tin chloride solution I ran such an experiment during my second attempt this time I took a purified microscope glass plate and poured some 2 percent tin chloride Solution on the surface to activate it. after activating the surface. I poured 10 drops of glucose and 20 drops of silver ammonia on it Here the iron's deposited on the glass will be the first to reduce silver becoming centers of crystallization because of this Depositing silver will quicker settle on the glass rather than float on the solution as a result of this reaction I got a practically perfect mirror Of course I can hardly compete with manufacturing technology used for mass production of mirrors Nevertheless is a good result. by the way besides mirrors you can obtain nanoparticles of silver from silver ammonia solution We just need to pour some hydrogen peroxide to it. such nanoparticles are frequently used for soaking socks fabric in order to kill bacteria which cause unpleasant smells so in the end we can conclude that silver is a very shiny metal and If you liked this video, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to see many more new and interesting

Channel: Thoisoi2 - Chemical Experiments!

Views: 190,904

Keywords: silver, silver properties, shiny metal, most shiny, silver mirror, mirrors, video about silver, silver nanoparticles, silver crystals, grow crystals, metal crystals, silver coin, native silver, silver extraction, inorganic chemistry, metal properties, melt silver, silver plating, silver nitrate, silver nitrate stick, Thoisoi channel

Id: v-L4lUrEUlI

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020