Chemistry lives on!

We had to carry out an experiment today, to study the heat of displacement between Zinc and Copper II sulphate. So I entered my group and did the experiment as ordered by the teacher. The fact is, when you add Zinc powder to the Copper II Sulphate solution, a little heat will be produced, because Zinc is able to displace Copper form Copper II Sulphate solution, so the experiment was carried out, and we attained a change in temperature of 30C to 39C. A change of 9 Degrees Celcius. By the way, the molarity of the CuSO4 solution was 0.2mol and a volume of 25cm^2.

But what would happen if you were to increase the molarity to say, about 2.0mol and this time instead of using Zinc we use a more reactive metal, say Magnesium?

The results were astonishing!

First the whole reaction turned into a dark grey liquid, the bubbles started to boil up, then thick white smoke was coming out of the cup, and then as the smoke died down, you can see the solution slowly being boiled down to the base eating away the sides of the cup. It was too hot to even put our hands near the cup, what more to take its temperature.

We thought it was going to explode! Well, it did, what if we were to put Potassium? With a CuSO4 molarity of 2.5mol?

The more reason to love Chemistry!