Separation Of A Mixture Essay

Separation of a Mixture

Objective:

What are the ways to separate a mixture?

Background Information:

In this lab, the law of conservation of matter is involved, which is the law that matter is conserved, it can’t be created or destroyed. This is used in our lab because after separation, the mass of the three substances combined should equal the original mixture. There are also three states of matter that are used in this lab, solid, liquid, and gas. The iron filings and sand are solid, the salt water solution is a liquid, and when the water evaporates, it is a gas. To separate the mixture we were given, we needed to use three different separation methods. These consist of magnetism, filtration, and evaporation. The first is magnetism, which is the force that can attract or repel objects. We used the magnet to

Part Two: Put the mixture of salt and sand in a beaker. Add 120 ml of water and stir. Place the filter paper at the top of the graduated cylinder and filter the mixture through it. The sand will be left in the filter paper. Scrape the sand into a beaker. Leave it to sit to let the water evaporate out of it. When the sand is dry, use the scale to measure the weight of it in the beaker. Then, clean the beaker and find the weight of it while empty. Subtract the two weights to find the weight of the sand.

Part Three: Pour the salt water into a beaker. Place the beaker on the hot plate and heat it to 540° C. Boil the salt water down until only the salt remains. Find the weights of the salt beaker and beaker without the salt using the scale. Subtract the two measurements to find the weight of the salt. Add the three weights of the separated components to see if the measurement is close to the original mass of the mixture.

Data:

Substance Mass (grams)

Original Mixture 8.69 g

Iron 1.68 g

Salt 2.43 g

Sand 4.19 g

New Total: 8.3 g