Today we started a lab. We placed on our safety goggles and got our equipment together and set up. The objective of this lab is by figuring out the density, solubility, freezing point, melting point, and boiling point you are then able to figure out the mystery chemical that is given to you. Today my lab group (Nikki, Taylor, and Nate) got to the point where we heated the chemical to find it's boiling point. By doing this, you have to get a beaker at least half way full of water, place it on the hot plate (which reaches, I found out today, 800 degrees) and then using a test tube ring you lower the test tube until it reaches into the beaker of water. We made calculations with our thermometer stayed in our test tube of the mystery solution throughout the whole heating process. As the temperature increased, our special thermometer recorded the data. It has a graph and data table that is organized on it. Tommorrow we are going to work hard to finish our data to find out our mystery chemical.
What I learned today is that recording simple information like boiling point, melting point, freezing point, density and solubility of a substance you are able to figure out what the chemical may be. I guess you can find out a lot of things about chemicals just by figuring physical properties.
