Ag+(aq) + Cl-(aq) 
AgCl(s)
Pb2+(aq) + 2Cl-(aq) PbCl2(s)
AgCl(s)Pb2+(aq) + 2Cl-(aq)
PbCl2(s)My question is how this experiment relates to daily life experience?
- Chloride is regularly monitored in municipal water supplies- especially in coastal areas. High chloride levels lead to salt poisoning (which was a principal cause of death in early America- it contributed to the failure of the Jamestown colony! [Earle]. The precipitation reaction with silver is the basis for several classical chemical analyses used to monitor chloride levels, and is also a quick spot test for chlorides (try adding a couple of drops of silver nitrate to your tap water!)
- Silver is very expensive and is recycled whenever possible. The silver chloride precipitation reaction allows silver to be separated from photographic and plating solutions and reclaimed.
- If adding salt to a water sample causes it to cloud, it is probably heavily contaminated with silver, mercury, or lead.
- The lead reaction has some implications for soldering; clean a high-chloride flux off your circuit board or the HCl will react slowly with the solder, producing lead(II) chloride.
- You have some insight now into how minerals like horn silver and cotunnite form and wether.
- C. V. Earle, Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia, in The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society, eds. T. W. Tate, D. L. Ammerman, W. W. Norton, New York (1979).