[RagnaVerden]

Hey guys, I don't post on forums often so I hope my formatting is adequate.

I recently did an experiment reacting copper II sulfate with Zn metal and I got what appears to be an impossible result. The solution was cycling from light blue to dark blue under stirring and also while stirring there would be visible zinc particles flying around. Once stirring ceased, whatever color the solution was would become permanent (light-dark blue) and the zinc particles would dissolve and reddish brown copper particles would form. This may seem like the normal reaction, but the presence of blue color indicated that there is still copper ions in solution. Upon adding more zinc the same process would occur. Over the span on 5 hours of stirring and stopping and adding more Zinc I ended up adding zinc equivalent to more than 50 times the original mass of copper to the solution, and the blue color still persisted.

The only solution both I and my chemistry professor (who has a PhD in chem) could come up with is somehow the stirring caused the naturally occurring hydroxide ions to break up into Oxide ions and hydrogen ions. Then the oxide ions would bond with zinc creating zinc oxide which wouldn't react with the sulfate ions. This appears impossible seeing as there was no electric current (hand stirring) and the temperature never became greater than 50 C.

Hopefully one of you guys can come up with a solution as to how and why this happened.

Thanks,
- Joe

[chenbeier]

Are you sure you add zinc and not something different.

[RagnaVerden]

Are you sure you add zinc and not something different.

Yes It was elemental zinc. The same stuff everybody else was using to react with copper sulfate