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What is the colour of elemental Ag? I have doubt whether it is black or silver in colour.
In Tollens' test, we get a silvery precipitate of elemental silver - hence silver in colour.
I have read somewhere and also in the following links as a reference that it was not mere speculation
(towards the end) and
Please confirm this. Thanks in advance.
Silver:
Silver sulfide precipitate is black. You are pobably confusing a precipitate in a test for silver, with actual silver. The precipitate in a test will be a compound of silver, such as silver sulphide which is black.
Nanophase metal particles are optically different from bulk in many cases, and can be black, but this doesn't seem to be what the question is referring to.
(this is just to illustrate with an image, even though the answer was already formulated by DavePhD )
It depends on what you define as colour - a silver bar will be metallic-silver, however silver powder may seem gray (or even black in water) (see image: http://www.nbchangjing.com/upload/2009031714521679.jpg )
I recently performed this silver-compound reaction : $\ce{Zn + 2AgNO3 -> Zn(NO3)2 + 2Ag}$ After a minute you could clearly see silver 'growing' from the zinc wire that I added to the silver nitrate solution. The silver was powdery black, however when I 'flattened' the silver powder, I had a silver-metallic surface.
I even found an image of a similar reaction involving copper wire :
You clearly see that there is a grayish-black silver powder forming on the wire, yet this doesn't have the same colour as a silver coin, for example.
