Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Electrolytes & Water

There are four objectives directed towards the lab we did today in class:
1. Review definitions of solution and electrolytes
2. Can you draw a particle diagram of the salt solution?
3. Can you create two different concentrations of salt solutions and qualitatively demonstrate this?
4. Can you mathematically show concentration difference and provide calculations to justify it?

Well I'm not going to lie, electrolytes were not the first thing to pop in my head when you asked about the salt water ( unlike Evan), but of course it did click afterwards; that amazing OOHHH moment happens to me often. Electrolytes are basically compounds that ionizes when dissolved in solvents such as water. A solution is a homogeneous mixture containing two or more pure substances. 

Second comes my favorite thing: particle diagramming! YAY (sarcasm)
The solutions with  different salt concentrations ended up with ratios of 100mL of DI water to 2.5g of salt (salt water) and 600mL DI water to .1g of salt (mimic tap water). We proved this with the electrodes and a light bulb...fun/scary stuff. 

                           original solution (tap water)                                 
                                                                                                                       our solution(tap water mimic)
  our salt water solution



The mathematical part of this pie is difficult to show on a computer... however my calculations were set up like so- 

Mimic tap water: 0.1gNaCl x 1 mol/57.45g NaCl = .001741molNaCl
and since molarity is calcluated by mol/Liter....
600mL=.600L
.001741molNaCl/.6LH20 = .029 mol/L

Salt water: 2.5gNaCl x 1mol/57.45g NaCl = .0435molNaCl
.0435molNaCl/.1LH2O = .435mol/L

Therefore, different salt ratio creates the difference in molarity which proves different the salt concentration solutions. BOOM. 

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