[nicamarvin]

Copper Plating Brass keys/Coins(any metal more noble than Iron, like copper, nickel, silver, gold) without electricity

I made two "How to" a simple one using Acidic copper sulfate(with Battery Acid)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Copper-Plate-Brass-Keys-and-Coins-Without-Electric/?ALLSTEPS

And I have also made a more complex solution here that will give it a nice bright copper shine if the metal(any metal) is polished first, I have tested on Silver and even gold and works.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Bright-Copper-Plating-Without-Electricity/?ALLSTEPS

I believe the reason for copper plating into other metals(like silver, brass, copper and even gold) is because by contacting the metals to be plated(Brass, Copper, Nickel, Silver, Gold) with iron I to make those metals inherit(while in contact) iron's standard electrode potential/half cell potential, in the case of iron it has a -0.44 volt potential and copper having a potential of +0.34 will plate directly to the metals in contact with the iron/steel container(and the container it self), is this right? can a real scientist confirm this for me?

[Intanjir]

That is part of what is probably going on. However merely changing the potential once wouldn't accomplish much as even just a few positive copper ions would have enough charge to negate that -0.44v. I suppose if you had a large enough chunk of iron then you might have a large enough well of electrons in the conduction band. However my understanding is that this would be an outrageously large amount of material. How big exactly I don't know. Perhaps as large as a mountain? It would be interesting to quantify.
If you think about it, you can change the potential of even a great thick chunk of metal in the blink of an eye just by briefly contacting it with one terminal a little battery. Only the tiniest amount of material in the battery has changed states in order to do this. So it doesn't take much to change the potential of even a large chunk of metal. So we see that the inherent capacitance of the conducting sea of electrons in the bulk of a metal material is quite small, thus for a practical set up we would need a continuous loop of current in order to plate a visible amount of material.

So, how can the iron object replenish the electrons it donates?

[nicamarvin]

That is part of what is probably going on. However merely changing the potential once wouldn't accomplish much as even just a few positive copper ions would have enough charge to negate that -0.44v. I suppose if you had a large enough chunk of iron then you might have a large enough well of electrons in the conduction band. However my understanding is that this would be an outrageously large amount of material. How big exactly I don't know. Perhaps as large as a mountain? It would be interesting to quantify.
If you think about it, you can change the potential of even a great thick chunk of metal in the blink of an eye just by briefly contacting it with one terminal a little battery. Only the tiniest amount of material in the battery has changed states in order to do this. So it doesn't take much to change the potential of even a large chunk of metal. So we see that the inherent capacitance of the conducting sea of electrons in the bulk of a metal material is quite small, thus for a practical set up we would need a continuous loop of current in order to plate a visible amount of material.

So, how can the iron object replenish the electrons it donates?

Thank you for taking this time of your day to respond to my inquiry, how can I explain in layman terms how am I able to do such plating without electricity to a non scientific minded individual?

I am not sure if you had time to check the links, but I attached a video of the process on each of the link, if you can check them for me, it would be much appreciated.

[Intanjir]

There is a popular experiment where you copper plate an iron nail by simply placing the nail in an acidic solution that contains dissolved copper. What you are doing here is essentially the same as that except you have another piece of metal in electrical contact with the iron which you intend to plate.

Attempt at a less-technical explanation:

Iron is fairly soluble in an acidic medium. Initially both the iron and the liquid medium are electrically neutral. You might suppose they would both stay this way but things turn out otherwise. Some of the atoms of iron will dissolve as positive ions and they will leave behind their electrons resulting in a small excess of negative charge in the remaining metal. This process will stop very, very quickly since the positive ions will find it harder and hard to leave an increasing negatively charged solid and enter into an increasingly positively charged solution. This excess negative charge will spread throughout and in particular it will also spread to the metal you want to plate since there is a conductive path.

The same sort of thing happens with other metals too but the degree to which they would separate charge will vary depending on the metal. In particular copper would stop leaving ~0.78 volts sooner than iron, assuming standard conditions. Now copper is nice in that this dissolution reaction can be reversed. If the solution is sufficiently positive relative to a piece of metal then the positive copper ions will be driven out of it and onto the metal. This happens here since iron creates a larger potential difference between the electrolyte and electrode than copper is capable of.

[Intanjir]

BTW, how well and how fast this works is impressive. How did you come to this method?

The iron dish seems to be coated in a fair bit of copper. Do you have to clean this off occasionally?

[nicamarvin]

BTW, how well and how fast this works is impressive. How did you come to this method?

The iron dish seems to be coated in a fair bit of copper. Do you have to clean this off occasionally?

Thank you for the very good explanation you gave on the other post.

I am a scientist minded type of guy and I have tried many methods of copper plating and at some point I stumble into this by chance.

The iron dish gets plated rather quick, but its very loose and spongy if I use the acidic formula(diluted sulfuric acid aka battery acid and copper sulfate), but it's quite strong when I use the copper oxalic complex formula, I have to clean the dish so it makes very good contact every time I do the plating, I have had good success with stainless steel and other metals too.