 Let's explore how metals react with acids and for that. Let's start with an experiment. We're gonna take dilute hydrochloric acid and add zinc to it and let's see what's going to happen. So you're gonna add zinc Look the moment we add the zinc a capsule we start seeing bubbles What is this? Why did this happen? Okay, now let's do another experiment this time. We are going to add magnesium to the same dilute hydrochloric acid and Let's see what are going to happen We again see bubbles, but wait this time the reaction looks much more vigorous than before If you compare the two this is with the zinc this is the magnesium you can clearly see there's more vigorous Reaction over here. So what is it going on? What does it mean? So what happens when zinc reacts with hydrochloric acid? Well since zinc is more reactive than hydrogen it kicks it out and forms zinc chloride And so the hydrogen comes out and so the bubbles that you saw was actually the hydrogen that was coming out Now this reaction is not balanced. So to balance it we just have to put two over here and there we go Similarly, what happened when magnesium reacted with HCl? We got something very similar Magnesium is again more reactive than hydrogen. So it kicks it out And you get magnesium chloride and again the hydrogen got liberated So in general when you have metals reacting with acids, what do we get? Well metals react with dilute acids in general to give you salt and hydrogen gas So these are the salts and this is the hydrogen gas that is evolved Now the last thing to remember though is that chemistry always has exceptions For example, you might think that copper will also react with dilute hydrochloric acid to give you the same reaction Copper chloride plus hydrogen gas, but guess what that doesn't happen copper does not react with hydrochloric acid the reason is that copper is less reactive than hydrogen and Therefore copper is unable to kick the hydrogen out of its place Now you might be thinking well, how do I remember which is more reactive and which is less reactive? We will learn more about reactivity series in a future video But the point is to remember that this is there are exceptions to it another example of another exception is Is for the dilute for the acid if you take nitric acid, which is HNO3 Then we find out that in most cases again, it does not give you hydrogen gas when it reacts with the metal Why is that? Well, because if a metal kicks the hydrogen out Then nitric, the nitric acid is an excellent oxidizing agent Which means it can provide oxygen to that hydrogen that is kicked out and that hydrogen combines with the oxygen to form water So you don't get hydrogen gas in most of the cases So sure in general we can say that metal plus acid gives you salt and hydrogen gas Sure, but remember it's chemistry. So there will always be some or the other exceptions You