Bizarre reaction at the mining claim

Letter 21107

Bizarre reaction at the mining claim

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Recently, while doing some micro-chems on my mining claim rocks I discovered a bizarre chemical Redox reaction.

Basically, I place a small (10 to 50mg) silver bead that has been alloyed/fused with a metal/sulphide matte on a glass slide. I then add two drops of distilled water and one drop of reagent grade HNO3.

Watching via a microscope, and after the reaction slows considerably (a few minutes) I place another drop of distilled water onto silver bead. Soon, a fern-like growth of silver metal forms and keeps growing, even as some of the silver bead is still being digested, but the fern-like Silver growth is not affected by nitric acid. I have checked this silver fern-like growth and it appears to be a purer silver than the original .999 fine silver.

I have conducted thousands of micro-chems and have dissolved thousands of silver beads and never saw this strange reaction before.

The question is: How can elemental silver grow from a contaminated silver source in a nitric acid (silver nitrate) solution by simply adding distilled water thereby reducing the acid from about 30% to maybe 15%? I suspect that this phenomenon is the result of a catalytic effect of a major alloyed contaminate.

I would enjoy further communication on this subject.

Joseph Cummins
Accu-Thump Sales - Mineral Bluff, Georgia, USA

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