Testing the concentration of Vitamin C in different juices and fruits

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Testing the concentration of Vitamin C in different juices and fruits.

Aim: - To test the concentration of Vitamin C in different types of Juice and fresh fruits.

Hypothesis: - I hypothesize that all the fresh fruits and fresh juices will have more Vitamin C than the processed juices or concentrates.

Background:-

Vitamin C also called ascorbic acid is one of the most essential nutrients for human beings. It is used for almost all metabolic reactions in the body. It is also used as a food additive. Vitamin C is used in the synthesis of collagen as well as functions as an anti-oxidant. The deficiency of Vitamin C causes a disease called scurvy in humans.

To determine the amount of Vitamin C in the substances I will use titration. Titration is a way to measure the unknown amount of a chemical in a solution (the titrant) by adding a measured amount of a chemical with a known concentration (the titrating solution). The titrating solution reacts with the titrant, and the endpoint of the reaction is monitored in some way. The concentration of the titrant can now be calculated from the amount of titrating solution added and the ratio of the two chemicals in the chemical equation for the reaction. In this experiment we will titrate the juices and purees with iodine.

The literature values for the amount of Vitamin C in each of the samples are:-

Source Amount

mg/100g

Indian Gooseberry 445

Packaged Fruit Juice Unknown

Papaya 60

Orange 50

Lemon 40

Packaged Lemon Drink Unknown

Variables:-

Dependant Variable: - The amount of iodine used in each titration.

Independent Variable: -

 The samples which are being tested for Vitamin C.

 The amount of Sulfuric acid used in the iodine solution.

 The amount of each sample ta...

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...xperiment carried out was successful. Even though the experiment was carried out with as much precaution as possible, there were chances of error in the experiment. We know this as the readings do not match perfectly. Some of the errors that could have occurred are:-

• Some of the Vitamin C in the fresh juices could have been oxidized while it was being prepared and while it was kept aside before usage. Since some of it was oxidized the amount of Iodine used would also decrease.

• There could have been a parallax error while using a pipette and burette.

• As the starch solution was added by a dropper the amount of starch solution in each sample could have differed as a dropper is a very inaccurate apparatus. Instead of this a pipette could have been used to minimise error.

• I could have taken one more set of readings to minimize my error.

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