Hydration Lab Essay

The purpose of this lab is to determine the piss of hydration of a compound (CuSO4) by heating it and because find its chemical formula. It was determine that the compound contained 4 moles of H2O for every 1 mole of CuSO4, hence had the formula CuSO4 4H2O and Copper II Sulfate Tetrahydrate. However, the literature none value was 5 moles of type O for every 1 mole of CuSO4 (Copper II Sulfate Pentahydrate CuSO4 5H2O).As calculated in a luxuriouslyer place in Data Processing, this means that the serving deviation from the literature value was 20%. This is significantly less than the percentage uncertainty, which was 37%. This should indicate that the haphazard error was higher than systematic error, because while there was a high level of uncertainty, the literature value still falls within that value, content that the measurements were close enough.In reality, though, this high level of uncertainty says more some the inaccuracy of the measuring equipment than it does abo ut the heart and soul of systematic error. For example, it is possible that simply non all of the water was removed from the compound. On the contrary, the lab procedure instructed to wait trials of heating the compound and weighing it until the mass values were within 0.05g of each other. Those in this lab were hardly 0.01g apart a difference which would non ready affected the outcome of the lab. This means it is unlikely that there was a significant amount of water rebrinying in the compound.Evaluation of unconscious processIt cannot honestly be said that this lab was executed successfully. This is for two main reasons1. the false vector sum2. the high degree of uncertaintyThe first of these is for certain the most important this lab did not achieve the desired result. bit the compound had a water of hydration of 5, the lab results said that this value should be 4. In some circumstances, such error could be tolerated indeed, 20% is not terrible. However, the very purpo se of the lab was to determine the compound, and this goal was not achieved.The southward point is how uncertain the data really was. Based on the percentage of uncertainty, the water of hydration could wipe out been any(prenominal)where from 2.5 to 5.5. This does contain the literature value, but has a range of more than half of that value (3/5). If the water of hydration could nearly have been 2 or 6, does this lab truly reveal anything? It gives a umbrageous estimate of how much water there is, but little more. often of the uncertainty was caused by an im microscopic scale used in the sign measurements. Only after the procedure requested precision to two ten-fold places was a more precise scale used, and the initial measurements were still only accurate to 0.1g. Also, if the mass of compound used had been higher, the percentage error would have been less simply because it would be a smaller portion of the calculated value.Improving the InvestigationThis lab did not meet it s goal, hence unimpeachably should be improved. The simplest change that could be made is to use the more precise scale from the beginning of the experiment. This would reduce the percentage error down to 6.7%, a much more reasonable value. This, however, does not solve the problem of the wrong value determined, because it is unlikely that this scale would have been any more accurate, disrespect being more precise.It is hard to pinpoint, therefore, exactly where the experiment went wrong, as it seems that the scales were not at fault but that a sufficient amount of water had been removed. There was certainly some kind of systematic error.One counselling that this error might be reduced, even without understanding its source, is to increase the amount of substance measured. Because the lab is about obtaining a ratio, this would not affect the result at all except hopefully to decrease the effect of any systematic error. This would, however, have the disadvantage of making the lab take longer, and stairs might need to be added to ensure that all of the compound has a chance to dehydrate.