Lecture experiment reveals nitric acid's effects on copper, highlighting passivation phenomena.
Copper is known to react slowly with diluted nitric acid, giving NO, and very vigorously with concentrated (≈ 70 %) nitric acid, the product being NO2. Surprisingly, when copper is brought into contact with pure nitric acid, there is no reaction at all! On dilution of the acid with water, a vigorous reaction occurs producing a great deal of NO2. We present here a lecture experiment on passivation, which provides an opportunity to discuss the nature of the protective covering that forms and the reasons it is destroyed under dilution.
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Petruševski et al. (2005) studied this question.
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