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Separation of Mixtures and Solids Essay

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Lab 2: Separation of Mixtures and Solids Purpose: The purpose of this lab is to become familiar with the separations of mixtures and solids. Pre-lab predictions: Data: Data Table 1: Experiment Data | | Grams | Percentage of Mixture | Iron Filings | 2.0g | 26.67% | Sand | 1.6g | 21.33% | Table Salt | 2.4g | 32.00% | Benzoic Acid | 1.2g | 16.00% | Total | 7.5g | 96% | Observations: While the water was boiling with the three solids (salt, benzoic acid, and sand) the water got very thick when trying to dissolve the benzoic acid, making it harder to pour out all the non-sand particles. Getting everything separated was much harder to do than expected because things like salt like to stick to the bottom of cups. …show more content…

Proceeding through the entire process helped me to experience and see the properties of the acid and salt and be able to separate them out. B. Discuss potential advantages or disadvantages of your proposed procedure compared to the ones actually used? Well, if I used my own, I would still be unable to separate the two. I would have probably separated them from the sand and kept boiling in hopes that something would happen to separate the salt and acid, yet nothing would, and I would be back to where I started. There would be zero advantage doing an experiment my way. C. How would you explain a sand recovery percentage that is higher than the original sand percentage? As the procedure mentioned, a little extra water would need to be added in order to remove all acid and salt from the sand, but the certainty that the acid and salt were completely separated, all particles, cannot be confirmed for absolute sure. Also, there might be miscalculations between the dish and the sand and an error somewhere in there or maybe the water wasn’t completely out of all the sand, and that caused the issues. D. What were potential sources of error in this experiment? As mentioned in the answer to question C, the particles completely separating (the sand from the salt and acid, the acid from the salt) without catching some residual particles from the

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