Why cant you get the copper out of a penny?

Answer 1

A Penny is mostly made out of zinc. It is also illegal to melt down coins for their base metals. The Governent makes coinage to encourage and foster economic activity....they get very angry if you melt down their coinage, and sell the base metal as a commodity in order to profit....it takes money out of circulation. but if you must know, it IS possible to remove the copper from a penny....All metals have different physical properties. An alloy is a mix of metals. Metals originally are smelted from their ores. Ore was once the main source of pure metals such as copper and iron. Around the 19120's, there was enough scrap metal to be able to reduce much of the demand for pure ores....and smelting alloys yielded a higher purity of the metal than from ores. Zinc melts at a very low temperature....about 800 degrees (f). Copper melts about 2000 degrees (f). In a controlled furnace with out oxygen, you could melt the pennys and leave the residual copper behind. In the presence of air, if carbon were added to the pennies, the zinc would convert to zinc oxide, which would mix with the carbon and come off as CO2 gas....again, leaving the copper behind. If you take a basic blow torch, and bring it into contact with a penny, who will see it quickly boil and turn into gas, almost instantly. not much remains behind. It would give you an idea of much temperature control you need to deconstruct the alloy....but be warned....the fumes from this experiment are highly toxic....it is not safe to do as described.....heavy metal poisoning will result and that is something you do not want.....but in the purest sense, you can smelt any allow just as if it were an ore, and extract the base metal....but you must have very high temperatures, and be able to control every aspect of the process....not something you can do in your garage....unless you are completely insane.