The Determination of the Mass of a Product of a Chemical Reaction

Observations throughout the lab

Day One -

           

The sodium bicarbonate first looks like a fine but somewhat crystallized white powder.  When you just started to add the HCL, the sodium bicarbonate bubbled away quickly, and made somewhat of a creator in its place. Slowly but surely the sodium bicarbonate went away. At the very end dropping HCL into the beaker, the solution resembled water.

Day Two –

            Day two, the remaining solution produced NaCl. There were small crystals all around the beaker.  When you added heat to the remaining products, it made a sound of crackling. This is the water evaporating out of the product. The beaker also cracked which can be attributed to some of the percentage error.

Data Table

Day 1 Data		Day 2 Data
Mass	Grams	Mass	Grams
Empty 150 mL beaker	77.22	NaCl plus beaker (first weight)	85.37
NaHCO3	13.62	NaCl plus beaker (second weight)	85.29
		NaCl plus beaker (third weight)	84.84 – Glass Broke here

Day 1 Discussion

1.     White the grams of NaHCO₃ you had in your beaker?

2.     Calculate how many moles of NaHCO₃ the mass is.

3.     Write the molar ratio for the NaHCO₃ /NaCl?

4.     Write the number of moles of NaCl you predict were produced in your experiment.

5.     Calculate the mass of NaCl you predict will be produced.

Day 2 Discussion

6.     Determine, by subtraction, the actual mass of NaCl produced in your experiment.

A. First weighting = 8.15 grams

B. Second weighing = 8.07 Grams

C. Third weighing = 7.62 Grams

7.     Calculate your percentage yield.

8.     What are some plausible reasons why your percent yield is less than 100%?

We broke the beaker, and lost about a half of gram of weight, we spilt some of the reactant. We also could have weighted the materials wrong, which would lead to a percentage error.

9.      Theoretically, some plausible reason why a percent yield is more than 100% is…

We could have weighed some of the reactants and the products wrong which would give a percentage error. The solution could have not been fully being “free” of all of the water in the product.