The Statue Of Liberty Became Green A Thread.

The copper Lady Liberty was assembled in New York Harbor in 1885 as a gift from France. She turned green due to about 30 years worth of oxidation reactions creating a mixture of minerals.

Lady Liberty's modification from coppery red to blue-green was inevitable as soon as they parked her in New York Harbor. First, there's all the oxygen in our environment, hungry for electrons. When an atom loses electrons in a biochemical reaction, it's called oxidation. This process was first observed in results that involved oxygen, hence the name, but it can happen with other elements too.

In the first result, copper gives up electrons to oxygen. That generates this mineral, cuprite, which you can notice is a pinkish-red. Next, cuprite succumbs more electrons to more oxygen, forming blackish tenorite. The black colour of this tenorite describes why the statue slowly got darker over the years, forming a chocolatey brown.

Now onto sulfur reactions, Sulfur dioxide gets into the air through natural processes, including volcanic eruptions. The human put a lot of it there too. So when sulfur dioxide receives together with water, it creates sulfuric acid, which can form green stuff with copper oxides.

Tenorite, that block reacted with sulfuric acid and water to make blue-green brochantite. There was regular more sulfuric acid in the air so the brochantite became green antlerite is any place on the statue. Anywhere the seaspray hit the Statue of Liberty and didn't get washed away by rain, the brochantite's sulfate got exchanged for chloride and made olive-green atacamite.

That beautiful and well known blue/green value. The statue of Liberty has tarried this colour for over a hundred years because all the exposed copper is now oxidized: She's stable at this point in her life.