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Category: Home and Apartments : Cleaning
Now I don't have any silverware of my own, but my parents have silverware, and I have had to clean the tarnish off of them more than once in the past. The method described here certainly works because I've used it many times, but whether you are bold enough to try it with your own silverware is another matter.
You will need:
1. Boiling hot water, or at least pretty hot...
2. A 9x13x2 pan or some baking pan of some sort.
3. Two tablespoons of salt.
4. Aluminum foil.
First, tear off a sheet of aluminum foil that will fit in the baking pan. Place it in the pan. It's not essential that the pan be lined with the aluminum foil. There simply has to be aluminum foil in the pan.
Second, boil your water. Pour some of that into the pan to fill it almost half way. You now have a pan with hot water and aluminum foil.
Third, add the salt and stir it in gently.
Finally, add your tarnished silverware and roll it around. You should see the tarnish disappear the more you roll it around. Remove the silverware when you are satisfied with its cleanliness and shine as you wish.
The principle behind this is that most metals corrode with exposure to oxygen. For example, iron rusts with time because of its exposure to moisture in the air, oxygen. You may also have noticed that cars in the northeast rust a lot faster because of the salt used on the roads in winter. The whole process involes electrons moving between the metal and oxygen atoms. It happens spontaneously with most metals (gold being a notable exception).
Silver does pretty much the same thing, only that tarnish is the combination of silver with sulfur and not oxygen. Silver is special with its more complex reactions, but the principle by which silver tarnishes is the same by which iron rusts.
Aluminum also does the same thing, only it happens more readily than silver...(see where this is going?)
So we need to move the electrons to and from the metals and we need a metal that will take the electrochemical abuse for the silver. The aluminum takes the hit for the silver, and the salt water allows the electrons to move between the silver and aluminum. I would explain more, but this is not a general chemistry article.
This of course raises the question of why airplanes (which have aluminum) don't dissolve in midflight...
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ChillyWilly |
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Science Lover |
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