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what's up with Cu here?,,,

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kclive:
I'm doing a lab report and there's this question i have to answer that just doesn't make sense to me:

Why does Cu readily react with HNO3, but not with HCl?

In either case, hydrogen is more active than copper. Is there something I don't know here? Thanks for all your *delete me*

Alberto_Kravina:

--- Quote ---Why does Cu readily react with HNO3, but not with HCl?
--- End quote ---
Do you know what the electrochemical series is?

kclive:
No we never talked about it in my Chem II AP class. But I think thats coming up later this year...

Thanks for replying! There were like 17 views of this thread and you were the only one to answer.  ;)

Oh i think I've heard of this electrochemical series before. I googled and got this:

http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/redoxeqia/ecs.html

So basically you're saying that copper reacts with HNO3 because copper gets reduced to a neutral charge and replaces H, which gets oxidized to a charge of +1.

Alberto_Kravina:
Well, a trick to know if a reaction takes place is to calculate DeltaE0

DeltaE0 = E0(reduction)-E0(Oxidation)
If this value is >0 it means that the reaction takes place, if the value is <0 it means that the reaction doesn't take place.

Sorry for this short reply-I should explain it a bit better, but I can't right now. :)

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