Mark Willstatter wrote:Jenise wrote:By the way, that old wives tale did work, but hasn't for quite a while now. It worked because of the H2S bonding to the copper in the penny, but since there hasn't been any copper in a "copper penny" for some years now (all alloys), it doesn't work anymore.
Hoke, AFAIK there still is some copper in a penny. Or rather on the penny, otherwise it wouldn't be that color. Maybe the chemists will weigh in here but I figure it would been only the outer layer of even an old-fashioned penny that was involved in this reaction. So my guess would be the modern copper-plated zinc job would work pretty much the same in this application as the older all-copper variety. But I could be wrong.
Nope. I, and some other friends in the wine world tried it several times under several circumstances. Doesn't work (or isn't reliable, at least, since I can't say we were scientific about it all.)
There may be some copper...I really don't know...but not enough to make the trick work.