Copper Nail

What You Need

• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• Clean, empty glass jar
• Twenty copper pennies
• Iron nail
• Baking soda
• Sponge

What to Do
Pour the vinegar and salt into the jar. Stir well. Put the pennies into the vinegar-and-salt solution for three minutes. Clean the nail with the baking soda and sponge. Rinse thoroughly. Drop the clean nail into the vinegar-and-salt solution with the pennies. Wait fifteen minutes.

What Happens
The nail is coated with copper, and the pennies are shiny clean.

Why It Works
The acetate in the vinegar (also known as acetic acid) combines with the copper on the pennies to form copper acetate, which then adheres to the iron nail.

Bizarre Facts

• The word vinegar is derived from the French words vin (wine) and aigre (sour).
• The oldest way to make vinegar is to leave wine made from fruit juice in an open container, allowing microorganisms in the air to convert the ethyl alcohol to acetic acid.
• Vinegar lasts indefinitely in the pantry without refrigeration.
• Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, used vinegar to help clear boulders blocking the path of his elephants across the Alps. Titus Livius reported in The History of Rome that Hannibal's soldiers heated the rocks and applied vinegar to split them.
• According to the New Testament, Roman soldiers offered a sponge filled with vinegar to Jesus on the cross. While the act is considered cruel, vinegar actually shuts off the tastebuds, temporarily quenching thirst, suggesting that the Roman soldiers may have been acting out of kindness.
• Copper is the best low-cost conductor of electricity.
• Copper does not rust. In damp air, copper gets coated with a green film called a patina, which protects the metal against further corrosion.
• Pennies are actually made from zinc coated with less than 3 percent copper.
• Soaking pennies in Taco Bell hot sauce removes the tarnish.

Heads, You Lose
A penny will be tossed heads 49.5 percent of the time. The head side weighs 0.5 percent more than the tail side, so it tends to land downward.

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