Making Salts

Aim: To produce copper sulfate salt by reacting copper sulfate with an acid.

Equipment:

Copper oxide powder
Dilute (0.5 mol L-1) sulfuric acid
50mL measuring cylinder
Two 100mL beakers
Bunsen burner
Tripod
Gauze mat
Funnel
Filter paper
Thermometer
Spatula
Evaporating basin
Stirring rod

Method:

1. Add 20mL of sulfuric acid to a 100mL beaker. Heat the acid over the Bunsen burner until it reaches 70 degrees Celcius. Turn off the Bunsen burner.
2. Once heated, use a spatula to add pea-sized portions of copper oxide to the beaker. Stir the mixture for around thirty seconds.
3. Repeat step 2 until no more will dissolve, allow the beaker to cool.
4. Fold the filter paper and place it into the funnel. Place this into the empty second beaker.
5. Make sure your beaker with the copper sulfate is cool enough to hold at the top. The contents should still be hot. You may need a guardian to complete this step.
6. Gently swirl the contents of the beaker, allow it to mix together. Then pour it through the filter paper in the funnel. Allow all contents to filter through.
7. Rinse the beaker you used to heat the mixture out and place it back onto the tripod, filled with 50-60mL of water.
8. Place the evaporating basin on top of the beaker and carefully pour the solution from the second beaker into the evaporating basin.
9. Gently heat the beaker until the solution in the evaporating basin has reduced by half.
10. Leave the evaporating basin to cool. Once cooled, move the evaporating basin to a warm place where it won't be disturbed (a window-sill) and observe over some days.

Results:

We were able to somewhat create the desired salt, except that it isn't ours. Our experiment was destroyed by another classes student, this is the results of their experiment.

However, on Monday this should be redone with the experiment that is being recreated.

Edit:

This is the actual experiment that we had redone, we believe this is better and an even better experiment than the one Mr Stock created for us.







Discussion:

During the experiment, we were able to recreate the original. The acid in the sulfuric acid was combined with the copper oxide powder and triggered a chemical reaction which created the copper sulfate salt. While in the earlier parts in the experiment, if you did it yourself, you would have noticed that it was a complete liquid until when you next checked up on it after some time. By when you looked at it, it would have crystalized. This is simply because after evaporating the water molecules only the copper sulfate salt was left.

Conclusion:

We don't currently have a conclusion of whether the experiment worked or not. However, we can report that we followed all the instructions to a tee. This post and my other classmates will be later on updated with the results of the experiments.

Edit: As we finally do have a conclusion and a finished experiment we believe that we completed the experiment successfully and the salt is perfectly made.