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-----The Time It Takes to Rust With Contaminants
I am a freshman student in Macon, GA. I am doing a science project about the rate at which iron rusts with contaminants such as salt and sugar. In order to do this I have to make iron rust. I want to know how long it takes for iron to rust so I will have enough time to conduct my experiment. I would also like to know if salt and sugar has an effect on rusting. If so, why?
In order to do this I have to have clean iron. How do I clean iron?
student - Macon, Georgia, United Sates
2006
The best way to clean the iron would be with
pumice
⇦ on
eBay or
Amazon [affil link] and a bristle brush, Jasmine. This will make the iron susceptible to "flash rusting", which implies that it will get some rust almost immediately
(same day).
My hypothesis is that sugar will have no effect but salt will hasten the rusting. I will conjecture that it is because of the chlorine in salt. If you want to build some evidence to support that, after you do the salt experiment (sodium chloride), you could do more experiments with chemicals that contain chlorine like calcium chloride and dilute bleach (sodium hypochlorite)
⇦ in bulk on
eBay
or
Amazon [affil link]
.
Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
Need quick confidential answers? $25
Need project assistance? $100/hr.
2006
Hi, I am a high school student. I am doing a science project on iron rusting. I am comparing the rusting rate of nail in tab water and sugar water. in result, the nail in the sugar water has less rust. I am just wondering why this happened? why sugar can slow the rate of rusting?
Tim P.student - London, Ontario, Canada
March 23, 2008
The salt is a catalyst for this reaction (it lowers the amount of energy needed for the iron to react with the oxygen, i.e., to rust).
Patrick McKenna- Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
October 19, 2010
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