Purpose: This lab was based on the separation of the components of a mixture. A mixture can be defined as a physical combination of two or more pure substances. Separation techniques are used to separate components that are not chemically combined. All of these techniques involve changes in the physical state of a chemical compound rather than chemical changes. Sea sand, table salt, and two other unknown substances will be separated using the separation techniques in order to demonstrate the properties of mixtures and their ability to be separated by physical means. If we use the 5 methods of separation, then we should be able to separate are mixture into 4 components.
Procedure: To start off, obtain a sample of the heterogeneous …show more content…
Pour the mixture into a weighting dish and weight the contents first using an electronic balance. Measure out 100ml of water into a graduated cylinder and pour into a 250ml beaker. Now take the weighting dish with the mixture and carefully pour into the 100ml of water. With a stirring rod stir the substance for roughly 30 seconds. Place a sheet of filter paper inside the funnel and place the funnel on top of the Erlenmeyer flask. Pour the beaker with the combination of water and mixture slowly into the funnel until all water is filtered through; leaving only the solid components behind. The remaining solids should now be poured into a beaker, and added with 50ml of water measured with graduated cylinder. With a stirring rod, stir the solution until the red and black solids float to the top. With a scoopula, scoop out the red and black solids into a weighting dish. Meanwhile set aside in a safe area the flask with the filtered salt water and cover. Pour out the water and red solids onto filter paper leaving the sand at the bottom of the beaker. With a spatula, scrap out the sand into a weight dish and set aside to dry. Now grab a hot plate and the flask with the salt water. After …show more content…
The purpose of the lab is to become familiar with the methods of separating substances from one another using decantation, extraction, and sublimation techniques. Mixtures occur in everyday life in materials that are not uniform in composition. During this lab we used a heterogeneous mixture. The physical elements of the substance gave it away Filtration is the process of separating a solid from a liquid by means of a porous substance-a filter-which allows the liquid to pass through but not the solid. . We used this method to separate salt water from the rest of the solids. It was also realized that NaCl is water soluble, while SiO2 is not water soluble. Since the SiO2 is not water soluble, is would remain after the water with NaCl was decanted. Also we took advantage of the fact that the red solid was less dense than water so that it floats. We couldn’t calculate the actual percent because we did not know the mass of each component in the mixture beforehand. The percent recovery for this experiment was low. There were sources of error that affected the amount of substance that could be recovered. During heating, some of the salt water splashed out of the beaker. However, the substance that fell onto the tabletop was not recoverable. Another source of error is the decanting process. Since this process is subject to human error at every point, it is likely that an error occurred