[kclive]

I'm doing a lab report and there's this question i have to answer that just doesn't make sense to me:

Why does Cu readily react with HNO3, but not with HCl?

In either case, hydrogen is more active than copper. Is there something I don't know here? Thanks for all your *delete me*

[Alberto_Kravina]

Why does Cu readily react with HNO3, but not with HCl?

Do you know what the electrochemical series is?

[kclive]

No we never talked about it in my Chem II AP class. But I think thats coming up later this year...

Thanks for replying! There were like 17 views of this thread and you were the only one to answer.  

Oh i think I've heard of this electrochemical series before. I googled and got this:

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/redoxeqia/ecs.html

So basically you're saying that copper reacts with HNO₃ because copper gets reduced to a neutral charge and replaces H, which gets oxidized to a charge of +1.

[Alberto_Kravina]

Well, a trick to know if a reaction takes place is to calculate DeltaE⁰

DeltaE⁰ = E⁰(reduction)-E⁰(Oxidation)
If this value is >0 it means that the reaction takes place, if the value is <0 it means that the reaction doesn't take place.

Sorry for this short reply-I should explain it a bit better, but I can't right now.