I Made a Real Mirror from Scrap

website or domain using code AMATEURCHEMISTRY

In this video I refine old silver jewelry using homemade nitric acid to obtain some silver metal which I then magically transform into a high quality mirror while trying hard not to contaminate everything with copper.

If you enjoyed the video consider liking it, sharing it with a friend, and subscribing to my channel - I would really appreciate that :)

Also, excuse me for my poor speaking, English is not my native language so I have some trouble with pronunciation, in case you don't understand something there are always subtitles made by me.

Please don't comment about how stupid I am to wear nitrile gloves when handling nitric acid, I am aware of the dangers and don't need hundreds of people trashing the comment section.

0:00 Intro
3:07 Making nitric acid from potassium nitrate
5:00 Dissolving old jewelry in acid
8:40 Melting copper cable
10:12 Separating silver from copper
12:41 Making pure silver nitrate
14:24 Making silver mirrors using Tollen's Reagent
18:38 Outro

#chemistry
#experiment
#beautiful
#demonstration
#science
#interesting
#silver
#mirror
#jewelry
#cool
#copper
#reaction

[k-or]

the destruction of antique jewelry for this purpose instead of like $10 of silver shot hurts my silver loving gremlin soul

[tracybowling]

You're right. That mirror is pretty awesome! I've seen "real" mirrors when I was young. They all looked like yours did right before you cleaned it. I always thought they were broken because they didn't mirror like brand new ones did. 😂

[yt]

This has been on my bucket list for ages, time to finally make myself some nitric acid

[HDMensur]

I‘m so used to Nile Red’s videos that at 0:45 i was expecting a big and heavy object to hit the mirror and break it…

[DangerousLab]

I would have turned all of the silver to silver fulminate before even thinking of making a mirror!

[ILikeToSayCaKaw]

This is one of the first demo's i did when i got my current job as a R&D chemist. Found some silver nitrate, 30%ammonia, and sodium hydroxide and mirrored some petri dishes. Just gotta be careful not to accidently go down the silver fulminate route, or things can get energetic ><

[amalgamation]

i just wanted to say ive been watching your videos for a while now and i really am happy to see your channel grow!!! your videos are getting better and better every time :)

[Nobe_Oddy]

Could you make a COPPER MIRROR??? oh PLEASE give it a shot :) (or maybe even gold LOL j/k)

[johnc.]

5:07
NOOO NOT THE ANCIENT SILVER COIN

[Nobe_Oddy]

Actually having very pure copper in an oxygen free cable DOES help with sound quality - but ONLY AT VERY HIGH like those big subwoofers in competition level builds... where they turn the entire cargo space of a van into the speaker box, with 8 speakers receiving 8, 000 each... YEA.. THEN IT MATTERS lol :D

[andrews.]

Awesome project the final result of the mirror was beautiful! Very satisfying metal chemistry.

[mrcool]

A procedure I read in old books is to separate the copper and silver by evaporating the mix of nitrates down and heating it to melting. The copper nitrate decomposes and the silver nitrate stays behind and is then dissolved out. I want to try this, it saves nitric acid because no need to redissolve the silver later on to get the silver nitrate.

[RiehlScience]

Instead of using copper to drop out the silver, it works much better to add HCl and precipitate silver chloride. Then, convert the silver chloride to silver metal with sodium hydroxide and sugar.

[within_cells]

Wow, the outcome of this was so impressive. Chemistry is awesome!

[oh_dasdehguy]

The visuals in this video are on point. Thank you for another awesome video!

[DaftyBoi]

I'd love to see you cover the electrolitic silver refining process in a video. It's so pretty when the huge crystals of silver form when done that way (you can do gold too, but the silver one is actually useful as a refining process where as with the gold one you have to start with already very pure gold, so it's kind of pointless. Plus the silver one looks way cooler and prettier as the gold forms as a brown gold dust crust, where as the silver forms in huge crystals of pure silver)!

[nathfish]

this channel is going places. awesome video as always

[existenceisillusion]

1:19 You CAN get it from a hardware store. Silver solder is something like 5% silver, just get, like, 10 kg, and process it.

[prathameshdhawanjewar]

Hey, I'm on a keto diet and can't enjoy certain foods. Could you make a video on efficient methods to separate sugar from mixtures, like honey or fruit juice/powder? It would be super helpful! Thanks!

[spiderdude]

You can MASSIVELY cut down on your purification steps and reagent costs if you had taken the silver powder and boiled it with water several times. This will greatly reduce the amount of copper left in it after the initial precipitation