Silver wire

How can one tell the difference between silver wire and aluminum wire?

I recently processed a big old old auto diagnostic machine which had some insulated copper wire and some insulated silver COLORED wire. The technology in the machine would date it to the 70's? There were several circuit boards with silver fingers at the plug in sites.

On a side note - I believe some circuit boards have some of the wet axil silver tantalum, umm, things. (Can't remember the name at the moment.)

I'll try to remember to take some pictures of the boards and post on this thread.

While on the subject..

I have found either a square of foil or a square of metal mesh under some northbridge heatsinks lately.

Its soft and thin, I expect its Ali not Silver, but why use it as part of a heatsink if the actual heatsink is Ali anyway?

Put hydrogen peroxide on the metal, look for the color of the oxidation and/or bubbles

Originally Posted by miked

Most insulated wire that appears to be silver is tinned copper wire. Why tinn copper wire because it makes it ready to solder. This makes the manufacturing process quicker/easier.

Remove some of the insulation an scrape the wire with a sharp knife. It should reveal copper underneath(it tends to appear a little pinkish). Or just cut the end and look closely at it and see there is the red copper inside. Mike

I will try that but I'm wondering as some wires are insulated copper, why also use tinned copper on the same machine?

I see the tinned copper used a lot in salt water marine applications. It's a pretty corrosive environment.

So I stripped some of the silver colored wire and did the hydrogen peroxide test. Low and behold, little oxygen bubbles formed on the wire, leading me to believe the wire is possibly Ag, silver. I only tested a small sample so I will strip a larger sample and check again.

I have a 1 ounce silver bar I will put into H2O2 and watch the reaction to compare against H2O2 reaction with this wire. Depending on more firm results, I will look for all the other wire that came off this machine and test. Although it may have been scrapped out by now..