Shiny Pennies - FunScience Scavenger Hunt

Hello there! Welcome to Fun Science Demos. My name is Naomi. Even though I have this shiny telescope here today, our Fun Science Scavenger Hunt isn't about astronomy. It's actually about what this telescope is made of. A shiny metal. Some of you may have some dull pennies lying around your house. I know I do. But did you know that there's a fun and scientific way to make them shiny like they're brand new again? Let's check it out! Here I have all of my scientific ingredients. I have my dull pennies here in this plastic bowl. I have regular white vinegar. I've got some table salt. And I have a measuring cup. The first thing I'm going to do is pour about 1 third of a cup or around 100 milliliters into my measuring cup. There you go. A little bit over a third of a cup, but almost exactly 100 milliliters. And I'm going to pour that in over my pennies. And then I'm going to measure a couple teaspoons of salt. That's two. Let's start with that. And then I'm just going to mix these right up. Mmm. The smell of the vinegar sure is strong. I'm not seeing changes after a few minutes. Feel free to add a little bit more salt. And keep stirring. Look here. You can see that most of my pennies are already getting really shiny. You'll know that the experiment is done when it looks like all of your pennies are really shiny. This should only take about five minutes. To make sure I'm not pulling a magic trick on you, I'm going to take this bowl to the sink, pour out our vinegar-salt mixture, and then clean off our pennies with a paper towel. Go on! Here are my washed and dried pennies from after we are done with our experiment. They're a lot shinier. Can you see? So, what do you think happened? What about the salt and the vinegar made these pennies shinier? If you think you can figure it out, leave a comment below. Thanks for tuning in to Fun Science Demos. And remember, science is so cool.