How to turn copper coins into gold ("Alchemist's gold" experiment)

For cool and safe experiments to do at home sign up to MEL Science here: https://goo.gl/gHn84C In this sim­ple and amaz­ing ex­per­i­ment, we teach you how to make “gold” coat­ings! Reagents and equip­ment: so­lu­tion of zinc sul­fate (20 g in 50 ml of wa­ter); dis­tilled wa­ter; cop­per coin; zinc; can­dles or dry fuel; burn­er for dry fuel; glass; tweez­ers. Step-by-step in­struc­tions Pour the so­lu­tion of zinc sul­fate into the glass. Add zinc gran­ules. Place the cop­per coins in the glass so that they touch the zinc. Heat the glass. Take the “sil­ver” coins out of the glass and heat them over the burn­er. They be­come “gold­en”. Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion When heat­ed, zinc gives up its elec­trons to cop­per. Cop­per be­comes neg­a­tive­ly charged, and at­tracts the zinc ions in the so­lu­tion to its sur­face. Zinc is re­duced on the sur­face of the cop­per, and the coin seems to turn sil­ver. If the coin is heat­ed, it be­comes “gold­en”. This is be­cause on heat­ing, dif­fu­sion from cop­per to zinc takes place, and an al­loy of cop­per and zinc is formed, which has a “gold­en” col­or. If the coin is im­mersed in cold wa­ter, the col­or be­comes rich­er. Safe­ty pre­cau­tions Af­ter the ex­per­i­ment, wash your hands thor­ough­ly with soap. Ob­serve safe­ty rules in work­ing with flames and heat­ing de­vices.