video Make Glass Mirrors With Silver Nitrate, Sugar, Ammonia and Sodium Hydroxide
How to make a mirror silvering solution from silver nitrate, ammonia and sugar.
Glass surfaces can be given coatings of silver that make them into mirrors.
WARNING: Perform the whole experiment in less than two hours. This is because the solution generates highly poisonous silver nitride on standing. Also, the solution will give off ammonia when heated so you'll need to do this outside, in a fume hood or in a well-ventilated area. And wash away all chemicals with lots of water.
Get one gram of silver nitrate and one gram of sodium hydroxide. Then add enough water to both to completely dissolve them. Mix them together and youll get a black precipitate of silver oxide. Then add enough ammonia to completely dissolve the silver oxide. Add four grams of sugar and mix well.
The solution will deposit silver coatings when its heated. If you heat it in a glass container it will deposit silver on the inside of the container. To deposit it onto a glass pane you can put the glass into a tray with solution and heat the tray from below. But do not let the solution boil. Boiling tears the silver off the surface.
Thin layers of silver can be wiped off with a cloth if the silver goes where you don't want it. Thicker layers can be removed by applying hydrochloric acid.
This process produces a back reflective mirror, which is what most household mirrors are.
If you need to silver larger pieces of glass, or need thicker layers, just scale up the solution.
Glass surfaces can be given coatings of silver that make them into mirrors.
WARNING: Perform the whole experiment in less than two hours. This is because the solution generates highly poisonous silver nitride on standing. Also, the solution will give off ammonia when heated so you'll need to do this outside, in a fume hood or in a well-ventilated area. And wash away all chemicals with lots of water.
Get one gram of silver nitrate and one gram of sodium hydroxide. Then add enough water to both to completely dissolve them. Mix them together and youll get a black precipitate of silver oxide. Then add enough ammonia to completely dissolve the silver oxide. Add four grams of sugar and mix well.
The solution will deposit silver coatings when its heated. If you heat it in a glass container it will deposit silver on the inside of the container. To deposit it onto a glass pane you can put the glass into a tray with solution and heat the tray from below. But do not let the solution boil. Boiling tears the silver off the surface.
Thin layers of silver can be wiped off with a cloth if the silver goes where you don't want it. Thicker layers can be removed by applying hydrochloric acid.
This process produces a back reflective mirror, which is what most household mirrors are.
If you need to silver larger pieces of glass, or need thicker layers, just scale up the solution.
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I am trying to discern what part of my process was the least scientific!
1. I mixed the AgNO3 with Drain Cleaner (Sodium Hydroxide, with some unspecified filler, and aluminium granules which i took out).
It immediately went all grey and curdled, but not quite so dark as the solution in the video. I used tap water.
2. it dissolved back to a very slightly brown/clear liquid with the application of Ammonia (25% solution.. the best i could get)
I take this as evidence that the chemistry is going alight so-far..
so i put it on the hotplate (a glass container placed in Boiling water to cap the temperature) and it proceeds to go dirty brown and stay that way... twice in a row.
Do you think
A: the AgNo3 is off, its straight from a factory sealed test tube, what is its shelf life?
B: my shoddy sodium is not so strong OR it came with too much Aluminium and spoiled the reaction? maybe substituted it or, bound to the silver making the black murky result
C: Do i have to heat it harder faster longer- maybe the water diluting the ammonia took it a long way off from being a saturated solution, is that part of the plan or is it irrelevant??
Please Help! I am an amateur at chemistry :)
B: Possibly, it would be better to buy a $2 container of pure caustic soda drain cleaner (keep the lid on when not in use, it sucks in water from air)
C: Gentle heat is all that is needed,
Most likely problem: chloride in the tap water or caustic soda, causing the silver to precipitate as white (or pale yellow) silver chloride. Use distilled or deionised water (from automotive store, for batteries or radiator topups) or very clean rainwater. I go through gallons of the stuff in the lab, for every solution. I also triple rinse any glassware being used for silver solutions.
Adding just enough ammonia to just dissolve the brown silver oxide is the way to do it.
Sorry.
I boiled a away for forty minutes, and got a oilslick like layer that came off on my finger.
Its hard to tell from the video timelapse, did you take an hour, or is it a 2 min reaction I should be expecting.
Does the fluid stay dark when the silver is all dropped out?
I was wondering if its worth doing all my remaining AgNo3 at once ´to get a thick shiny coat, or is there a saturation point relative to the Sodium Nitrate?
Thanks for the speedy reply!
Oliver
your drain cleaner might have had a detergent that's interfering with your process.
The fluid should go creamy as the silver particles become big enough to reflect light..
Me and my friend are planning to do this experiment as a science fair project and need some help with the explanation..
So can you please give a scientific explanation for this experiment explaining the reaction and how the mirror is formed? (and maybe why we chose the materials that have been used..) anything you may now about it...?
We've been searching alot and can't find the right explanation..
please respond as soon as possible..
thank you (:
Paul
Toxic....muaw hahahahaha
. aluminized mylar might work, but probably won't be very rugged.
http://www.instructables.com/id/SEOH3GFFABRWUOD/