Making Salts II

Aim:To produce copper sulfate salt by reacting copper oxide with acid

Equipment

• Copper Oxide powder
• Dilute sulfuric acid
• Measuring Cylinder
• Two Beakers
• Bunsen Burner
• Tripod
• Gauze Mat
• funnel 
• filter paper
• thermometer
• Spatula
• Evaporating basin
• Stirring Rod     

1.Add 20ml of sulfuric acid to a beacker, heat the acid until it reaches 70 degrees. Turn your Bunsen Burner off.

2.Once heated, use your spatula to add small amounts of copper oxide powder to the beaker, mix for 30 seconds

3.Repeat step 2 until no more oxide will dissolve. Allow the beaker to cool

4.Fold the filter paper and place it in the funnel. \

5.Place the filtered funnel in the second beaker

6.Make sure that the beaker is cool enough to hold at the top, gently swirl the contents in the beaker, then pour it into the funnel

7.Rinse the previously used beaker and place it back on the tripod with 50-60ml of water. 

8.Place the evaporating basin on top of the backer and carefully pour some of the solution into the basin. 

9.Gently heat the beaker until the mixture is reduced in half

10.Leave it to cool. Once cool remove from the beaker and place somewhere it won't be disturbed. Leave for a few days and observe. If done correctly, blue copper sulfate crystals should form.

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. 

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 crystallised. 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.