Quick chemistry question
 

Tonight my school had like a special chem. thing sponsored by the National chem. Association or, whatever. We had the chance to bring a bottle, or a bunch of bottles, and coat the inside with silver.

Basically, we were supposed to wash the inside out with nitric acid. Then pour the acid out and rinse with water. Then pour in hot water to heat the glass up. After some time, we were to pour the hot water out and pour in some silver-nitrate and splash it around. This would coat the inside with silver, and make the outside look like like a mirror. It was pretty cool.

Now, on to my question. For my bottle, I decided to bring in a Capt. Morgan Parrot Bay Coconut Flavored Rum bottle. I Followed instructions pretty much to the letter. Got a rubber stopper, poured in some Nitric acid, closed the stopper, and started to swoosh it around. Fore everyone else's bottle, nothing interesting happened.

However in my bottle, apparently the nitric acid started to react with the alcohol left over from the rum and turn yellow. Also, a really thick yellowish-orangeish-brownish gas started to form and filled the entire bottle. :eek:

I decided to not do the silver thing, since the toxic-looking brown gas made it look much cooler. So, I just kept the rubber stopper in, and took it back to my dorm. Once I got home, for a safety measure, I covered the stopper and rim of the bottle with epoxy.:D

My question is, does anyone know what this brown gas is? :confused:

I assume it is poisonous/toxic since it looks a lot like Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2). I will try to find someone with a digital camera to take a pic and post it. However, the gas itself looks something like this:

http://kronjaeger.com/hv/hv/exp/no/no2_l.jpg

Thanks, I appreciate if anyone could help me out here.

Nasty. Still, brown colour is a dead giveaway of NO2 gas.

Nitric Acid (HNO3), i think, reacted with water:

3 NO2 + H2O <--> 2 HNO3 + NO

Or something. Dont think it was the alcohol.
Then again, my last chemistry class was a long time ago.

Yep, that's gotta be NOX gas in there. Assuming that you didn't wash the bottle out before you put the nitric acid in there, any oxidizable material in the bottle (not just the alcohol) could have produced that gas. :D Pretty cool. :cool:

Yea, Im just surprised that I was the only person, out of like 100 or 150 people that had this happen.

Most people had like a whiteish-clearish gas coming off, but I'm pretty sure that was just the nitric acid evaporating off.

Maybe not.
Maybe some CO2 formation.

Could be.
:shrug: