Describe the Reactions between Metals and Acids

This activity tests a student's ability to understand the reactions between metals and acids.

 

Firstly, when an acid reacts with a metal, the metal salt of that acid will be produced. At the same time, it will produce hydrogen gas.

 

What does that look like?  The general path of these metal/acid reactions is:

 

acid + metal  salt + hydrogen

 

Note that the word 'salt' here refers to a metal salt, i.e. a compound of the metal which has been formed through reaction with an acid, e.g. zinc chloride, potassium nitrate and iron sulfate are all metal salts.

 

Here are two examples of reactions of different metals with dilute acids:

 

zinc + sulfuric acid →  zinc sulfate + hydrogen

 

magnesium + hydrochloric acid → magnesium chloride + hydrogen

 

So where did the 'sulfate' or 'chloride' come from?  It might help to use compound names for these acids - after all, they are all compounds of hydrogen in solution.  

 

So, hydrochloric acid = hydrogen chloride

sulfuric acid = hydrogen sulfate

nitric acid = hydrogen nitrate

 

If we look back at the two word equations above, we can now see where the zinc sulfate and the magnesium chloride have come from.

 

Here's another example:

 

copper + nitric acid →  copper nitrate + hydrogen

 

could be rewritten as

 

copper + hydrogen nitrate  → copper nitrate + hydrogen

 

In all of the above reactions, the metal has taken the place of the hydrogen in the acid and formed a metal salt.  It's a type of displacement reaction.

 

Are you ready to have a go at some questions on this now?