Activity series of metals

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Metals	Metal Ion	Reactivity
K	K+	reacts with water
Ca	Ca2+
Na	Na+
Mg	Mg2+	reacts with acids
Al	Al3+
Zn	Zn2+
Fe	Fe2+
Ni	Ni2+
Sn	Sn2+
Pb	Pb2+
H2	H+
Cu	Cu2+	highly unreactive
Hg	Hg2+
Ag	Ag+
Pt	Pt+
Au	Au3+

Metals are listed in decreasing ease of oxidation, or increasing ease of reduction. A metal can replace metals listed below it in the activity series, but not above. For example, sodium is highly active and thus able to replace hydrogen from water:

2 Na (s) + 2 H₂O (l) -> 2 NaOH (aq) + H₂ (g)

Metals that can replace hydrogen within acids but not water are listed in the middle of the activity series, for example zinc replaces hydrogen in sulfuric acid:

Zn (s) + H₂SO₄ (aq) -> ZnSO₄ (aq) + H₂ (g)

The activity series has applications in electrochemistry, where two dissimilar metals are chosen as electrodes of a battery.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) Activity_series_of_metals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_series_of_metals) version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Activity_series_of_metals&action=history) GNU Free Documentation Lizenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License) CC-by-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

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