Chemistry SL Lab report 2

Titration in practice
Done by Omar Nizar
Instructed by George Sharbim
Experiment done in 2/11/2020

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Performing an acid-base titration
Purpose: How much is the concentration of HCL in a 10cm 3 solution?
Background information
In 1828 the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac found the concentration of an unknown solution
using the concentration of a known one, he called this titration. Titration is one of the most common
processes done in chemistry labs, specifically analytical chemistry.

Research and research questions

What is titration? How does it work?
Titration is basically finding how much acid or base (in acid-base titrations) is in a solution through
determining what volume is exactly going to react completely with this solution.

In titration graphs, pH is plotted against the final volume (the added). When adding it, the pH increases
in a slow rate, then it increases rapidly until it reaches the equivalent point

What Is the equivalence point? How do we recognize it?

The equivalence point is when the precisely added base (it’s a base in our case only but can be different)
is just enough to neutralize the exact amount of the acid in the solution (again acid in our case only). The
neutralization for most strong acids and bases is 7pH.

It's recognized using what we call an indicator, this simply just changes in color when the equivalent
point has been reached (7pH) in this case. This graph below represents an example (Work citation is in
the last paper)

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(Hypothesis is after data so it makes sense to the reader)

Materials used:
 Burette
 Clamp stand and burette clamp
 White tile
 10cm3 bulb pippete
 Pipette filler
 100cm3 conical flask
 Sodium hydroxide solution (known)
 hydrochloric acid (HCL) unknown
 Phenolphthalein indicator
 Distilled water

Procedure:
1. The burette was put on the clamp stand and made sure it’s stable, color changes were seen
easily
2. The burette was flushed with NaOH to remove any water stuck to the sides then filled and
disposed until it read exactly zero
3. Added precisely 10cm3 of hydrochloric acid in the flask, then added a few drops of indicator
(phenolphthalein)
4. Performed the first trial, running the solution until the entire solution changes in color, stopped
at exactly the equivalent point.
5. Cleaned the flask and repeated again for more accurate measures, this time not stopping every
point, but jumping to –0.5cm3 of the volume added during the first rough trial and then added
slowly drop by drop
6. Repeated thrice
7. Took the average of the measures not including the rough trial

The data for this experiment

Unknown acid: HCL also known as hydrochloric acid

Base added: NaOH also known as sodium hydroxide

The indicator used is: phenolphthalein indicator

(Since this is an acid-base reaction and a double displacement reaction, of course there should be there
a chemical equation, it's in analysis)

My hypothesis would be that the titration will take place when the volume of the added equals the
volume of the present since we needed them to completely reach with each other, using this we can
find the concentration of HCL

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Data and Analysis
Table:
The following table represents the 4 different trials taken, all numerical values are in cm3, the final
volume is the added base (NaOH) when the equivalent point was reached, there might be some errors
and uncertainties limited to ±0.05cm3 but mainly the measurement tends towards the original value
written in the table.

Runs Initial volume Final volume Titre

Rough 0 7.28 10
Accurate 1 0 6.95 10
Accurate 2 0 6.88 10
Accurate 3 0 6.90 10

Uncertainties:
These measurements aren’t 100% accurate, there are can be many errors including human errors from
reading the measurements mistakenly or having the solution just a bit under-titrated or just a bit over
titrated, but all these errors combined might affect the numerical value by two decimal point at
maximum, as I said we can write this as ±0.05cm 3 which is very extreme but there to cover all the
systematic and random errors mentioned and not mentioned.

Analysis:
Now that we have 3 accurate measures, we can add them and get the average so

(Accurate 1 + Accurate 2 + Accurate 3) ÷ 3= 6.91cm 3

This simply means that we need this amount of Sodium hydroxide (we know that the NaOH solution=0.1
M) to completely react with hydrochloric acid

Further analysis:
The equation for this acid base reaction is

NaOH + HCL --------> NaCl + H20

We can calculate the concentration of HCL using what we know about the known solution NaOH and
what volume of it is needed to completely react with HCL

This following picture contains the calculations for the concentration of HCL due to some glitch
in Word

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We can find the percentage error by taking the difference of actual and experimental results and then
dividing them by the actual result converted to %

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Results:
o The titre was always the same (10cm3) so the average is also the same
o The concentration of determined through the experiment was 0.0691 mol per dc 3
o The actual concentration was a different number but as I pointed out in uncertainties in
the data section there of course was some random and and-or or systematic error. The
percentage error calculated is 30.9%
o The reasons for this error (mentioned in the data section under uncertainties) are many,
but one main reason I think would have a great effect is that the added volume
should’ve been a little less or more due to the solution being under or over titrated

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Conclusion and reflection:
My hypothesis was incorrect, because these two solutions are two totally different solutions
with different concentrations
The concentration of HCL in the experiment is 0.0691dm3 mol and the concentration should
have been 0.100dm3 but was different due to some uncertainties and errors and the percentage
error was approximately 31%
Next time we should pay more attention to the titrated solution rather than the measurement
above, make sure that you stop just at the equivalence point. One drop can make a huge
difference

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Work cited (not MLA because there is no enough info):
Most graphs created by Omar Nizar through excel
First picture from https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/chemical-
processes/titrations-and-solubility-equilibria/a/acid-base-titration-curves
Calculation done by Omar Nizar and photographed through camera