What occurs when zinc metal is added to hydrochloric acid?

1 Answer
Aug 4, 2016

I don't know. It has been years since I did that experiment.

Explanation:

The addition of zinc metal, as a powder, would have produced a vigorous effervescence; heat would also have been evolved. The metal powder would have gone up into solution. We can represent this reaction by the balanced chemical equation:

#Zn(s) + 2HCl(aq) rarr ZnCl_2(aq) + H_2(g)uarr#

We write the equation in order to establish the stoichiometry; the mass equivalence of the reactants and product.