Kids Science Experiments

Copper Coat Metal

When cleaning your copper pennies, you can transfer the copper onto another piece of metal.

Our Science Experiment

We are going to coat a nail or paperclip with copper.

What you need

20 dirty pennies
glass jar
vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
a paperclip or a nail

How to perform this experiment

Fill your jar half full with vinegar and then stir in the salt. Put all your pennies into the jar. After about 5-10 minutes, remove your pennies, rinse them with water and dry them with a towel. Add the nail or the paperclip to the dirty water. Wait for about 3 to 4 hours.

Watch!

The nail (or paperclip) has turned to copper color!

Why did it do that?

After removing the pennies, little copper atoms remained in the dirty water. These atoms float around in the water until they find something to stick to. This something was your negatively charged metal (the nail or paperclip).

I wonder what would happen if

I wonder what would happen if I tried to reverse this and put the metal coat over the copper?