when metals and acids are combined, why does it produce bubbles?
In: 3
Acids are proton donors, or also known as hydrogen. So take a simple acid like hydrochloric acid, it has one part hydrogen and one part chlorine. When you introduce it to a metal the chlorine is more attracted to the metal than the hydrogen. For example if you have sodium you’ll get sodium chloride, or table salt. But that hydrogen has to go somewhere, so it rebonds with itself so it is stable and gasses off, those are the bubbles you see. But be careful, they aren’t regular bubbles, they are flammable.
It produces bubbles because it produces gas. Specifically, hydrogen gas. Acids are, by definition, molecules prone to giving up hydrogen when they react with things.
Something has to take the place of the hydrogen in the molecule, though, and that is the metal. In return, the metal gives up an electron, which is what allows it to be free of the molecule.
The other two comments explained it very well, but they kept the explanation pretty complex, so I’ll give you a simplified version.
Everything in our reality is made up of small pieces called atoms, and those small pieces get together to create molecules. So a molecule is a chain of atoms.
The acid is a molecule, and when it hits the metal, it loses one of its atoms, the hydrogen atom. That Hydrogen atom and binds to a metal atom, and now they form a small molecule of two atoms.
So the metal dissipates because its small pieces bind the hydrogen, and these new small molecules make the bubbles.
Latest Answers