Bronze is a solid solution of Cu(s) and Sn(s); solutions of metal...

Question

Bronze is a solid solution of Cu(s) and Sn(s); solutions of metals 
like this that are solids are called alloys. There is a range 
of compositions over which the solution is considered a 
bronze. Bronzes are stronger and harder than either copper or 
tin alone. (c) Suggest a reaction 
that you could do to remove all the tin from this bronze 
to leave a pure copper sample. Justify your reasoning.

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone For this problem, we're told that sterling silver is an alloy made up of silver and other metals. We need to propose a method to obtain a pure silver sample from a sterling silver that is made up of silver and zinc. So for this problem, we're going to need to refer to the activity series of metals and elements. And what we're going to do here is look at the position of silver and zinc and we're going to compare that. And so when we look at the activity series, we see that zinc is higher on the activity series than silver. And what this means is that zinc is more reactive to oxidation than silver. And so when zinc oxidizes it yields ZN two plus and it can be oxidized to ZN two plus or zinc two plus by acid or steam, but silver cannot. So, a proposed method that we can use is to treat the sterling silver sample with hydrochloric acid to remove Zinc as zinc two plus and leave a pure sample of silver. So this will be our proposed method is to treat it with hydrochloric acid. That's the end of this problem. I hope this was helpful

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