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Pure Chemicals Additive Lab Report

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Are the Volumes of Pure Substances Additive?
Introduction
In this lab, the densities and mass of water and isopropyl alcohol were calculated in order to answer the question ‘are the volumes of pure substances additive?’ This lab was used to help introduce the different types of glassware that will be used, as well as basic concepts such as density and the difference between accuracy and precision. Accuracy is how close the measure value is to the true value, while precision is how close the measured values are to each other. Volumetric glassware is designed to measure the volumes of particular liquids. Certain pieces of equipment, such as a volumetric pipet, are designed to be very accurate and precise. Other pieces, like a flask, allow for …show more content…

However, when mixed, the solution only added up to 9.902mL. Therefore, no, the volumes of the two substances were not additive. Though this number was not the expected 10mL in any of the trials, a lower number than 9.902mL was predicted by each member of the team, based on the different densities of water and isopropyl alcohol. Though this is close enough to 10mL that it could be possibly due to human error, when checking through the measurements that are known to be accurate, it seems unlikely that error would result in this large of a gap (this is being assumed, no statistical analysis tests were done). This confidence that it is not the result of human error also comes from comparing the error present when measuring 10mL of water using the volumetric pipet. While just measuring water, the calculated average volume was within .034mL, less than half of what would be expected if the volumes of isopropyl alcohol and water were additive. It was concluded that the different densities is what caused the volume to be lower than the expected 10mL. The different molecule arrangements between the substance could possibly allow for spaces for the substances to ‘mesh’ with each other, fit into open spaces of the other solutions …show more content…

The volumetric pipet was the most accurate and precise, while the Erlenmeyer flask was the least accurate and the least precise. The graduated cylinder was much more accurate than the Erlenmeyer flask, but not quite as accurate as the volumetric pipet. In part two, 5mL of water and 5mL of isopropyl alcohol were mixed in attempt in attempt to answer the question ‘are the volumes of two pure substances additive?’ According to our data, no, they are not additive. When mixed, the results consistently came up at least .08mL shorter than what was

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