Venus, the second planet from the sun, is the hottest world in the Solar System. It is blanketed by a thick atmosphere that heats its surface like the inside of a greenhouse. It has a surface temperature of almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 C).
Mass: 4.869e+24
Mass (Earth=1): 0.81476
Equatorial radius (km): 6,051.8
Equatorial radius (Earth=1): 0.9488
Metals- Melting Points:
Prediction: I think that the least reactive out of the metals given will be the most suitable for the spacecraft. This is Copper, it is a very unreactive metal. Not only is it below Carbon it is also below Hydrogen, which means that Copper does not even react with water. Copper is not very reactive because it has five shells of electrons, four of them are full, and the outer one has three electrons. An atom which only needs one electron to make a full shell is much more reactive than one that needs to loose three or gain five.
The surface of Venus is very acidic and reactive; it is made up of Sulphuric acid. This means that if the spacecraft were made out of Copper the reaction would be:
Copper + Sulphuric Acid = Copper Sulphate + Hydrogen
Method:
What I will need: Sulphuric Acid
Magnesium
Aluminium
Zinc
Nickel
Iron
Copper
Measuring Cylinder
Scales
Test Tubes and Rack
- I will collect the seven different metals and weigh them, and record the weights in my results table.
- I will have two examples of each metal to make the test as fair as possible e.g. 2 copper, 2 magnesium etc.
- After I have weighed every piece of metal, I will fill each test tube with 30mm of Sulphuric acid.
- I will then submerge the seven different metals into the Sulphuric acid in the seven different test tubes, and label them. I will do this twice for each metal so there will be 14 test tubes in all.
- After about a week I will take each metal from its test tube and weigh and record the new weight and percentage difference. This is necessary so that we can find out which metal reacted most with the Sulphuric acid. The metal with the lowest percentage difference will be the best because it means it is the least reactive.
Fair Test: In order to make this a fair test I will make sure that the metals are submerged in the same amount of Sulphuric acid, so that one metal doesn’t have more to react with than another. I will leave the metals for the same amount of time, this is so that one metal does not have longer in the Sulphuric acid than the other, if it did then the weight could be affected. I will also ensure that the metals will be left in the same area, so that the conditions around them will be the same e.g. same amount of sunlight. As a group, we decided to use two examples of each metal so that we can conclude an average percent difference for each.
Results: