Hi i got a question . how can i tell if the silver i buy is pure is
there any simple test that i can do to find out how pure the
silver i’m getting?
thank you
Hi i got a question . how can i tell if the silver i buy is pure is there any simple test that i can do to find out how pure the silver i'm getting?
G’day; depends what you mean by ‘pure’ If you really mean 99.999%
silver, then there is no such a thing as a simple test. If you mean
the difference between sterling and ‘fine’ silver, then yes, there
is. Warm a tiny piece of the metal with a little nitric acid, or
with ferric nitrate. Add ammonia slowly and carefully. If you get
a blue colour, then the silver is sterling and not ‘fine’, because
after the ammonia has neutralised all the acid, it will combine with
any copper to form a complex hydroxide which is blue. Copper is the
most likely contaminant for silver. – Cheers for now,
John Burgess; @John_Burgess2 of Mapua, Nelson NZ
There is a simple test for pure silver. It the way our friend
Aristotle who cried Eureka did it.
Here’s the quote (in translation) from Vitruvius
"Heiro, after gaining the royal power in Syracuse, resolved, as a
consequence of his successful exploits, to place in a certain temple
a golden crown which he had vowed to the immortal gods. He contracted
for its making at a fixed price and weighed out a precise amount of
gold to the contractor. At the appointed time the latter delivered to
the king’s satisfaction an exquisitely finished piece of handiwork,
and it appeared that in weight the crown corresponded precisely to
what the gold had weighed.
But afterwards a charge was made that gold had been abstracted and
an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of
the crown. Heiro, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked,
and yet not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to
consider the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his
mind, happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed
that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the
tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question,
without a moments delay and transported with joy, he jumped out of
the tub and rushed home naked, crying in a loud voice that he had
found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in
Greek, “Eureka, Eureka.”"
Weigh the silver in air, then in distilled water. Divide the weight
in air by the loss of weight in water and you have the specific
gravity of the material. I should be 10.5
Tony Konrath
Gold and Stone
http://www.goldandstone.com