The Silver Mirror Award—Chemical Demonstration Kit

Product Details

Reward student achievement or creativity with the “silver mirror award,” a beautiful silver-mirrored flask that you create in the lab. Simply combine four solutions in the Florence flask provided with the kit, swirl and voilá—a thin, reflective silver coating “plates out” on the inside of the flask. Dextrose, a reducing sugar, reacts with silver ions in solution to produce silver metal. The redox reaction “mirrors” the way silver mirrors are actually produced! Kit contains one 250-mL Florence flask and enough chemicals to prepare five silver-coated items. Use your imagination and surplus lab glassware to create additional awards, ornaments or vases for your chemistry classroom.

Concepts: Oxidation–reduction, reducing sugars.
Time Required: 20 minutes