How can you make coins shiny

If the layer of brown oxidation doesn't budge, return the coins to the dish and let them soak for five more minutes. Method 2: If your kids want a more hands-on approach to coin cleaning, add a small amount of water to a tablespoon of baking soda to form a paste.

Let your kids use a toothbrush to apply the paste to each coin, scrubbing gently. Rinse the coins to reveal the now-shiny surfaces. Method 3: Fill the plastic container with a 1-inch layer of warm water. Add a squirt of dishwashing liquid and agitate the water to create bubbles. Add the coins, and rub each one until the surface looks shiny. Rinse with warm water, then dry. All rights reserved. Close Sign in. When the vinegar and salt dissolve the copper-oxide layer, they make it easier for the copper atoms to join oxygen from the air and chlorine from the salt to make a blue-green compound called malachite.

To understand how the nail and screw got coated with copper, you need to understand a little bit more about atoms.

Atoms are made up of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons and protons are both electrically charged particles.

Electrons are negatively charged and protons are positively charged. Negative charges attract positive charges, so electrons attract protons. When you put your dirty pennies in the vinegar and salt, the copper oxide and some of the copper dissolve in the water.

That means some copper atoms leave the penny and start floating around in the liquid. But when these copper atoms leave the penny, they leave some of their electrons behind. Rather than having whole copper atoms in the liquid, you've got copper ions, copper atoms that are missing two electrons.

These ions are positively charged. Now add two steel nails and a screw to the mixture. Steel is a metal made by combining iron, other metals, and carbon. As you found out when you cleaned your pennies, your mixture of salt and vinegar is really good at dissolving metals and metal oxides. When you put the steel nail in the mixture, some of the iron dissolves. Like the copper atoms, each of the iron atoms that dissolves leaves two electrons behind. So you've got positively charged iron ions floating in your vinegar with the positively charged copper ions.

Originally, the steel nail was neutrally charged-but when the iron ions left their electrons behind, the nail then became neg-atively charged. And remember what we said way back at the beginning of this section: negative charges attract positive charges.

The negative charges on the nail attract positive charges in the liquid. Both the iron ions and the copper ions are positively charged. The copper ions are more strongly attracted to the negative charge than the iron ions, so they stick to the negatively charged nail, forming a coating of copper on the steel. Each water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Pour the vinegar into the bowl and add the salt. Mix until the salt is dissolved. Try dipping a coin in and holding it there for 5 minutes. See how half becomes really shiny! Make sure you rinse all the coins with clean water. The Science Coins become dirty due to oxygen in the air reacting with the metal to form copper oxide.