Richard Harwood and Ian Lodge Solutions for Chapter: Patterns and Properties of Metals, Exercise 2: Exercise 8.2

Magnesium reacts very slowly indeed with cold water but it does react strongly with steam to give magnesium oxide and a gas. Write the word equation for the reaction between magnesium and steam.

Choose one metal from the reactivity series that will not react with steam.

Choose one metal from the reactivity series that will safely react with dilute sulphuric acid.

In each of the experiments below, a piece of metal is placed in a solution of a metal salt. Complete the table of observations.

At start	Colour of metal	grey	_____	silver-coloured	silver-coloured	_____
	Colour of solution	colourless	_____	blue	blue	colourless
At finish	Colour of metal	coated with silver coloured crystals	_____	coated with brown solid	silver-coloured	coated with silver-coloured crystals
	Colour of solution	colourless	_____	colourless	blue	_____

In each of the experiments below, a piece of metal is placed in a solution of a metal salt. The observation table is shown below:

At start	Colour of metal	grey	grey	silver-coloured	silver-coloured	brown
	Colour of solution	colourless	blue	blue	blue	colourless
At finish	Colour of metal	Coated with silver coloured crystals	Coated with brown solid	Coated with brown solid	silver-coloured	Coated with silver-coloured crystals
	Colour of solution	colourless	colourless	colourless	blue	blue

Use these results to place the metals copper, silver, tin and zinc in order of the reactivity (putting the most reactive metal first).