• Question: water is a compound so is copper sulfide when you chemically combine them what do you get?

    Asked by 289newg32 to Aoife, Brian, Conor, Louise, Matthew on 11 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Louise Mc Grath

      Louise Mc Grath answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      Hi 289newg32!

      Well combining water and copper sulfide is not a very safe thing to do.. definitely something you should never try at home! The reason you don’t want to combine them is because they react to form toxic vapours of hydrogen sulfide (H2S). H2S is very poisonous, corrosive, flammable, and explosive. Definitely not something you’d want to make at home, or anywhere!

      Funnily enough H2S smells like rotten eggs, and it is this smell that they base the fart bomb smell off of! It’s not very nice at all.. smells worse than real farts!
      Here is more information on it: http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/hy/Hydrogen_sulfide

      On a less scary note it also forms copper hydroxide (Cu(OH)2) as shown by the equation here:

      CuS + 2H2O = Cu(OH)2 + H2S
      (Copper sulfide + 2Waters = Copper hydroxide + Hydrogen Sulfide)

      Copper hydroxide is much safer than hydrogen sulfide, and can be used as a colourant to make ceramic objects much more colourful (makes things more blue-green) something kind of like this .

      I hope this answers your question! Let me know if you have any more questions on it!

    • Photo: Aoife Lucid

      Aoife Lucid answered on 11 Nov 2016:

      I agree with Louise on this one, you definitely don’t want to make H2S!

    • Photo: Matthew Kitching

      Matthew Kitching answered on 15 Nov 2016:

      Hi 289newg32!

      oooooh – I don’t think that copper sulphide is that dangerous (you should still use it in a fume hood, especially when its a power!)

      so although it theory copper sulphide can react with water – that reaction is generally quite slow. In fact we can make Copper sulphide in aqueous solutions!

      Copper sulphide is pretty insoluble in water – its actually a naturally occurring mineral. One is called Covellite and its found in volcanoes! you can read about it here.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covellite

      Copper sulphide is also super important as it can act as a superconductor – so lots of people are studying it to see if we can make better computers and materials using it!

      Hope this answers your question – let me know if you want to know more!

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