In preparation for this experiment, we first made up a batch of iron acetate, as instructed in the front of the book. Wearing Playtex gloves, John pinched off about a cubic inch of fine steel wool. We dropped it into a jar with 2 cups of vinegar and left it to soak for 24 hours. You could see bubbles of what the book says is hydrogen coming off the steel wool ball, which first floated on the top, then sank, then floated up again. (I did not try to ignite the hydrogen, although I thought about it.)
Then today, we gathered the following:
Iron acetate solution
First we ladled 2 tablespoons (30 ml) iron acetate into the bowl. Then we added 1 teaspoon of ammonia to make it turn red. But we found that the color was hardly noticeable. So we added a total of 5 teaspoons. You can see the difference below:
Next we dropped in 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of hydrogen peroxide, to turn the solution green. Just the one teaspoon was enough to make the solution the nice dark color.
Here is what iron acetate looks like chemically:
Fe3O(OAc)6(H2O)3]OAc (OAc is CH3CO2-)
Anthony helped me with this post. More redox experiments tomorrow!