So with a little bit a chemistry we can
take a copper penny
coat it in zinc metal and then melt the
copper and the zinc together
to produce what looks like a gold penny.
So let's see how we do that.
First thing will need are some shiny
pennies. The year doesn't matter
as long as the outside copper Then we'll
dissolve sodium hydroxide pellets
in water to make a really strong basic
solution.
And sodium hydroxide is fairly dangerous so we're  gonna be very careful with this.
once or sodium hydroxide pellets that
dissolved in the water
we can add zinc powder and that zinc powder is  also going to solve some extent
and that's what's gonna coat the outside
of our pennies.
so here we have a hot plate with our
pennies in the solution of sodium
hydroxide
and then we also have that zinc powder
in there and that zind powder
is dissolved in the water, much of it, is
and that's what's coating
the pennies. It only takes about 15 to 30
minutes for the pennies to be covered in
zinc.
The hot plate is really useful because it
speeds the whole process up.
So you can see close up here
we pt the penny in the sodium hydroxide
zinc solution and right away the
color starts to lighten.
After just a little bit you can see it's
been coated with zinc
on the outside the penny and then after
a little while
the copper color is no longer visible
which you see that zinc color.
So when we apply heat that layer of zinc
is gonna melt with the copper beneath
and we're gonna end up with brass
which you saw happen right there. The
nice thing about brass
is that it doesn't corrode like zinc.  And
that means we're going to have our gold penny
 
for years to come. This is Dr. B, and
thanks for watching.
