Aqua Regia dissolves Gold - Periodic Table of Videos
We dissolve gold into aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid) for the first of our extra "Molecular Videos" series. More links in description below ↓↓↓ Support Periodic...
==========
Aqua Regia, Royal Water, is a mixture of two acids, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. The reason it’s called ‘royal water’ is because it dissolves gold. Gold has fascinated people for thousands of years because it doesn’t dissolve in anything, doesn’t tarnish, always looks nice and shiny, and this was a material that could dissolve it. So it was really something, the lion of the acids, like the lion of an animal, king of the animals! So Aqua Regia is a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, but each of those is a mixture of something in water, a solution of something in water. So hydrochloric acid is hydrogen chloride, which is an atom of chlorine bonded to an atom of hydrogen, now the importance of this is that when the HCl dissol...
==========
Aqua Regia, Royal Water, is a mixture of two acids, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. The reason it’s called ‘royal water’ is because it dissolves gold. Gold has fascinated people for thousands of years because it doesn’t dissolve in anything, doesn’t tarnish, always looks nice and shiny, and this was a material that could dissolve it. So it was really something, the lion of the acids, like the lion of an animal, king of the animals! So Aqua Regia is a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, but each of those is a mixture of something in water, a solution of something in water. So hydrochloric acid is hydrogen chloride, which is an atom of chlorine bonded to an atom of hydrogen, now the importance of this is that when the HCl dissol...
