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Chemical Reaction Lab

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The purpose of this experiment is to understand how two different reactions can lose mass in a chemical reaction, and to learn how to arrive to the results in an organized way of recording data. The two balanced equations that we worked with were: NaHCO_(3(s))+HCl_((aq) )→NaCl_((aq))+CO_(2(g))+H_2 O_((l)) and; Na_2 CO_(3(s))+2HCl_((aq))→2NaCl_((aq))+CO_(2(g))+H_2 O_((l)) The procedure to obtain the mass lost for these two reactions was to first calculate the mass of HCl. For the first reaction, which was sodium bicarbonate, the mass of the beaker was weighted, then the grams of NaHCO_3 were added to the beaker and the mass was weighted. After recording the mass of the beaker with the NaHCO_3, 25 mL of HCl were added to the beaker and the mass after the reaction was weighted. To determine the mass lost in the reaction, the initial mass of the reagents was subtracted with the final mass of the reagents. The same procedure was performed with the sodium carbonate reaction, however 50 mL of HCl were used instead of 25 mL. Each chemical reaction was …show more content…

Because the value in the theoretical mass of CO_2 lost in the first run was 0.566 g and the mass obtained from the experiment was 0.618 g. This shows that 0.618 g was close to the theoretical value and it had a 9.11% error. On the other hand, the values of sodium carbonate had a greater percent error (22.2% and 39%) which meant that there was a big difference between the theoretical expectation and the actual mass obtained. Some discrepancies that could of cause the values to differ are the grams of NaHCO_3 and Na_2 CO_3 added to the beakers because some values were close to one gram or a little more than a gram. Another discrepancy is that some of the HCl might have stayed in the volumetric pipette; therefore this would of affected the weighted mass of the beaker with the

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