This weekend, I was filling a bottle with some copper nitrate crystals for display in my office at home. They are a really beautiful shade of blue and as long time readers of this blog know, I love bright, pretty colors. My daughter wanted to dissolve a few crystals in water to make a blue solution, and so we did, but the solution was disappointingly pale. Sure that I could solve the problem, I went to the laundry room where we keep many of our household cleaners, hoping to find some ammonia which we could add, since Cu((NH3)62+ is much more intensely colored. To my dismay, I found that we do not carry ammonia any longer (assuming we ever did). So I rummaged through the various cleaners, sure that at least one of them was ammonia-based. The glass cleaning solution looked promising, but the label stated "ammonia free formula" so that was out. Finally I found some Windex with "Ammonia D," what ever that is, and tried adding that to our copper solution. No color change occurred, although a precipitate did form. Acknowledging my defeat, I told my daughter I'd bring something back from the lab on Monday.
Today, a few pinches of ammonium carbonate did the trick and restored my standing as a chemist in our home again.
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Instructors at the University of Nottingham have put together a series of short videos describing each element of the periodic table . I haven't had the chance to go through all the elements yet, but it's definitely worth a look.
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I might be wrong but you may have been precipitating some insoluble intermediate copper (II) hydroxides when you used the "Ammonia-D". I think if you had stuck to your guns it would eventually have re-dissolved and given you the dark blue solution.
Welcome to the "Dad has a doctorate ... no not the useful kind" therapy group. We should get t-shirts.
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