Anyone good with Chemistry? Chem question...

[ben-the-slacker]

Anyone know if it's possible to convert copper dust to copper wire?
I brought this predicament upon myself by asking one stupid question in class; now the teacher wants me to do it as an experiment (I hope I'm getting extra credit for this)... DOH!

[vass0922]

melt it

not sure what the melting temp of copper is, so dont think you'll be able to do it yourself (certainly not in your oven at home!! lol)

[ben-the-slacker]

I wasn't sure if copper dust is meltable or not...
I don't think I can melt dust with just a ordinary Bunsen burner. However, I think there's a high temp oven/furnace or something like that in the storage closet across the hall that the biology prof. uses to clean test tubes. Maybe that'll work.

[Richard Cranium]

Copper 99.9%
Physical Constants:
Solidus 1949°F (1065°C)
Liquidus 1981°F (1083°C)
http://www.bellmanmelcor.com/cda110.htm

Melting Point of Copper = 1,083°Celsius (=1,981°Farenheit)
a zinc penny can be melted in a Bunsen burner but a copper penny cannot.
http://www.1728.com/projects.htm

pre-1982 pennies are all copper and the ones after 1982 are all zinc.
A pre-1982 penny contains about 28,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 copper atoms.

[cadetstimp]

Hmm maybe a combination of heat and pressure would lower the temperature requirement.

[Xaotic]

Heat and pressure would do the trick nicely. Copper is an annealable metal and can be formed by heat and pressure. The process of making wire can be preformed by extrusion(pulling the copper through a small hole), if I remember correctly.