Your question is poorly stated. Literally running silver nitrate on tap water makes no sense; I assume you intended to ask, "What would you expect to happen if you ran a silver nitrate test on tap water?" and Why?
The answer is that most city water supplies have been treated with chlorine in order to disinfect the water and make it suitable for drinking. As a result, there is a small amount of chloride ion present in the tap water. That chloride ion reacts with the silver ion in silver nitrate to form silver chloride. What you will see is a white cloudy solution.
Ag^+(aq) + Cl^-(aq) ==> AgCl(s)
When the same test is conducted on distilled water no cloudiness forms since there is no chloride ion present.
If you ran silver nitrate on tap water and distilled water,which one may show a slightly positive reaction? Why?
2 answers
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