Consider the following reagents: zinc, copper, mercury (density 13.6 g/mL), silver nitrate solution, nitric acid solution. (a) Given a 500-mL Erlenmeyer flask and a balloon, can you combine two or more of the foregoing reagents to initiate a chemical reaction that will inflate the balloon? Write a balanced chemical equation to represent this process. What is the identity of the substance that inflates the balloon?

Video transcript

Hi everyone for this problem. It says you are provided the following re agents, antimony, platinum, nickel, acquis, copper chloride solution and hydrochloric acid solution. Assuming the reaction undergoes in an Ellen Mayer flask with a balloon attached to it. Which combination of re agents would you use to obtain a chemical reaction that will fill up the balloon determine the identity of the gas that fills up the balloon. So for this we're going to need to look at our reactivity, our activity series of metals so that we can compare the position of these re agents to see which one is going to be most reactive to oxidation. And when we do that, we'll see that nickel is higher in the activity series compared to antimony and platinum. And so when Nicole undergoes oxidation, that means it can because it's so high it means that it can displace hydrogen from acids and so our nickel once it undergoes oxidation is going to form And I two plus. Okay, and so we can now write out a reaction of nickel plus acquis hydrochloric acid and as a single displacement reaction, this is going to yield nickel two chloride plus hydrogen gas. Okay, so this is going to be our overall reaction and asked for the identity of the of the gas. And here we can see that the identity of our gas is going to be hydrogen gas. Alright, so this is going to be our final answer and were able to use were able to solve it by referring to the activity series. That's the end of this problem. I hope this was helpful.