Weird Science Question

[Death]

If a mine had a rich copper ore, in which the copper was mostly found as a sulphate, what other less expensive metal could be used to precipitate the copper out of solution? If zinc was $4.00/kg and iron was $2.10/kg, which do you think would be the best choice to use? Why??

My guess is the iron because it is cheaper???

 

[thesage]

You might need to use more iron though.

 

[GoldShadow]

Although this is a horribly flawed question in many ways (and doesn't even really make sense), I'm going to keep it simple:

If you look at the metal reactivity series, zinc is above iron. Therefore, zinc is more reactive than iron. Zinc will react with more copper sulfate, and for the purpose of your question, would be the better option.

 

[Death]

Ok thanks. Would the prices have anything to do with the question or are just there to trick you into doing an equation or something?

This whole experiment we did is really weird becasue I get Iron with electronegativity of 1.83 not reacting in any solution that we tried. Why is this so? And does iron react with silver nitrate??