Name_______________________Date:___________ Per:___
Penny Alternative
Assignment
Prelab Questions:
What element do you think pennies are mostly made of? ______________.
Chemical Symbol? _____ Atomic #? _____ Atomic Mass? _____
Calculate the Protons, Neutrons, Electrons: P = ____ N = ____ E = ____
http://goo.gl/yPOQB0
Go to the youtube video:
be capital, must be capital!)
(letters that need to
Write a Procedure (listing steps: 1., 2., 3., etc.) on how to make the
penny gold. And as you write your procedure, make sure to use the
proper lab equipment terms!
Background Information:
Edward Elric decides to quit being a Chemistry teacher and go into Alchemy. One of
alchemy’s goals is to transmute base metals to one of the noble metals (gold or silver).
Edward Elric found the fabled recipe of how to turn pennies into gold! Did he truly find
it?
In this reaction, zinc ions are formed by simply adding zinc chloride and zinc metal to
water.

 Zn2+ + ClZn(s) + ZnCl2 water
When a copper penny is added to the solution, the zinc ions (Zn2+) near the penny trade
places with the copper of the penny. Some copper goes into solution as ions, and the
zinc becomes a metal and takes its place. This process is called electroplating. The
silver color produced is due to the metallic zinc coating (or plating) the penny. When
the zinc-coated penny is heated, the penny becomes gold in color. The gold color is due
to the zinc and copper combining to form brass.
Brass is a copper-zinc alloy. An alloy is a mixture of two or more metals dissolved in
each other while they’re molten. The percentages of copper and zinc in brass vary
depending on the type of brass, and there are many kinds of brass. Low zinc brasses
contain less than 20% zinc and are easy to form. Yellow brasses contain 34-37% zinc.
Some brasses contain small percentages of other elements like aluminum, tin and
silicon.
Analysis:
1) What is an element (definition and then in your own words)?
2) What is the chemical symbol of gold? _____ Atomic number of gold? _____
Research the following:
3) What are the three subatomic particles of an atom?
_______________
_______________
_______________
4) Define each of the subatomic particles below and what each of their purpose is in
an atom:
5) Which subatomic particle (from #3) do you think gives an element its identity (tell
you it’s that element)? And justify why you think so.
6) Did Edward Elric or the guy on the video turn pennies into silver and then into
gold? Why or why not? (Be sure to mention the word alloy in your answer).
Background Reading for #’s 7 and 8:
At the time of 300 B.C., the Greek scientist Archimedes
discovered that the buoyant force is equal to the weight
of the displaced fluid. He did this in the bathtub.
As the story goes, King Hiero had a crown of gold that
he thought might be silver. He asked Archimedes to
solve the problem. One day, when Archimedes was
taking a bath he noticed that water spilled out when he
stepped into a full tub. His body took up space and
displaced an amount of water equal to his body’s
volume. “EUREKA!!!” he shouted. He solved the
problem.
To test if the crown was pure gold, Archimedes got a silver bar and a gold bar that had
the same mass as the crown. If the crown was gold it would displace the same amount
of water as the gold bar. It did not; it displaced an amount of water equal to the silver
bar. The crown was not pure gold  
7) Based on the previous text, are there any tests that we could perform on our penny
to confirm or deny that it consists of pure gold? List and describe one of these tests
below:
8) Is it a simple task to change one element into another? Why or why not?
9) Gold's chemical symbol comes from the Latin word for gold, aurum. Gold's chemical
symbol is Au. Find three other elements that have their chemical symbol based on their
Latin word.
Element
Chemical Symbol
Latin Word
10) Find out the composition of the pennies before 1982 and after 1982.