I am learning, on my own, with the help of textbooks kindly given to me at Christmas by my grandfather and my own experimenting, some more advanced chemistry than what I studied in Grade Seven. Partly as preparation for High School, and partly for my own knowledge. However, I ran across some reactions that need clarifying. Through frequent observation, I noticed that HCl likes to form chlorides. So is this equation correct? CuSO4 + 2HCl --> CuCl2 + H2SO4 Although I found it unlikely that it would form sulphuric acid, I could not find another spot to put the SO4, which I know cannot exist as a free compound. The second puzzlement in my going-ons was that sulphuric acid usually reacts with metal carbonates to form sulphates, am I not correct? For example, they usually ended up something like this, right: H2SO4 + CuCO3 --> CuSO4 + CO2 + H2O Originally I found some weird ionic compound but then I realized that this broken down form would work better. However, until I do it, I have no way to prove that metal carbonates react in this way with sulphuric acid.