why did the copper on the statue of liberty turn green but copper mugs and copper pipes don’t?
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As others have said, it’s mostly a matter of time and weathering factors. If you look at really old plumbing, it’s green, too. My grandma’s house was built in the late 1800s and had some original plumbing until at least the mid 1980s. I remember being in the basement and asking why she had green pipes instead of shiny copper like my (less than a decade old at that point) house. The answer was along the lines of “It’s really, really old and we’re too afraid to look at it very hard, much less actually try to replace it.”
For a slightly more modern example of large scale outdoor copper oxidation, check out photos of St Josephat’s Basilica in Milwaukee, WI. It was built about 125 years ago, and the roof of the dome is copper cladding similar to the Statue of Liberty. In the early 1990s, the roof was the classic old penny blue-green color. The cladding was completely replaced in 1997 and the shiny new copper was bright enough that it caused problems when the sun was at an angle to reflect into evening rush hour traffic.
If you look at current pictures, the roof has faded considerably and now resembles a not-old-but-not-new penny. It’s not bright enough to shine anymore (fortunately for those trying to stay on the road on that part of I-43), but it’s still a dark metallic color. In another few decades, the roof will be Lady Liberty Blue, and probably need to be replaced again in a century or so.
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