We had the flame test in chem today, where you burn barium/copper/strontium/potassium and look at the color of the flame. Anyways, Joanne/Faustine/Courtney/Jessie/I finished the mini-lab, so we started burning the sticks that the elements were on, and mixing colors and all that good stuff.
So we finished burning sticks, and I head on over to Peter and Ross's group, since they always do a ton of awesome stuff. They were burning pennies. =] As in, the post-1982 pennies. Since they're copper-coated zinc, and zinc has a lower melting point than copper, the penny would start melting on the inside with the copper still being solid, and tapping it on the lab table would cause the zinc to ooze out. (See? There's chemistry involved! We're pyros, but we're not just pyros.) We decided it would be awesome if we had a crucible, since we could then fuse all of the zinc bits together and get a nice block of zinc. xP I love how Mr. Coburn did absolutely nothing about it - when Joanne and I were still burning pennies and he wanted to turn off the gas, he asked if we were done burning stuff. =P
So after that lab group stopped, I got Joanne to do it with me, and Peter came over to watch. I tried burning a pre-1982 penny on accident - it turned cherry red and started flaking. o.o But anyways, we burned a few more pennies and it was pretty awesome. =D If any of you ever get to try this, adjust the Bunsen burner so that there's that bright blue triangle within the flame, then hold the penny at the tip of the triangle. Once it starts melting (you'll be able to tell; it'll like, bend), pull it out of the flame and tap it on the tabletop.
So anyways, I now have a zinc penguin and a demolished copper "penny" that looks like it's oozing zinc (the two pieces are fused together).
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