Sodium Acetate Lab Report

Aaron Li Oct 11 4:16 PM, home

Purpose: To make Sodium Acetate and then Acetic Acid.

NaHCO3(s) + CH3COOH(l) → CO2(g) + H2O(l) + Na+(aq) + CH3COO-(aq)

Hypothesis: The baking soda is white and fluffy with some clumps. The vinegar is reddish-black.
Combining them will create bubbles, a gas sound, and a visible white gas. Sodium acetate will
be crystallized while the solution bubbles. Adding water to it will create a gas sound and a
visible white gas, while the sodium acetate disappears.

Materials: Baking Soda, Vinegar (not concentrated unfortunately), pan, and waterbottle

Safety: Be sure to put water inside the plastic bottle and heat it up to make it more resistant to
heat, otherwise the plastic could melt and spill
Have the “fumehood” on
Have the doors and windows open
Have safety goggles and a jacket on, and gloves on.
Prevent exposure of sodium acetate to air or water.
Do not touch or eat sodium acetate - even if it’s edible.
The baking soda should be less than the vinegar.
Make sure the pan is clean of water

Procedure:
1)Record observations of baking soda
2)Record observations of vinegar
3)Mix a small amount (or 1 spoon) of baking soda and put it in the pan.
4)Mix a large amount (or 2 spoons) of vinegar and put it in the pan.
4)Record observations
5) Put it in the pan
6) Record time
7) Record observations
8) If you want to you can add water to it to make

Observations:
Baking soda: White, powdery, 2 cm chunks at maximum, like white dust
Vinegar: Smells like vinegar. Blackish-brownish with some black solids.
time it took for it to react
Reaction: Bubbles and gas sound, no gas visible.
When put in the pan, the large bubbles are slower than caramel and the small bubbles are like
soda. The reaction eventually stops after about half a minute, not timed. Then I put the heat on.
Didn’t have gloves on at the most important time.
Time it took to heat up, over 15 seconds, most likely 30 seconds.
The sodium acetate looks like burnt vinegar, smells horrible too. It’s dark and light brown with
some holes and round spots like trapped bubbles.
A gas like smoke ended up forming - almost looked like wok smoke.
Put it at high heat.
Adding water reacted almost instantly - made a coffee/chocolate smell and produced a smoke-
like gas that travelled slower. There were bubbles. It look like vinegar. It flows much more
slowly. Added 1 spoon of water.
Heating it on low heat produces a wok-smoke-like gas. Smells awful too.
Evaporating it all on medium heat turns it into a solid.
1 spoon of water. It smelled terrible this time. 2 spoons of water. 3 spoons of water. It only
flowed slightly with increasing amounts of water I added to it. Once again a smoke formed.
This time some light brown solid formed. Powdery like sand or the dust of baking soda.
Hydrogen peroxide did nothing.
I noticed that the hair that was in there from the beginning of the experiment was still there after
30 minutes or so.
I added in more water to see what would happen. The areas with sodium acetate - or whatever
that white powder was, made lots of bubbles. So much gas was produced that it was like a burnt
pan with smoke. The bubbles were dissolving slowly - somewhere between water and caramel.
The bubbles keep having a center area where they bubble - sometimes it’s at one area and
sometimes another. The solids near the pan disappeared. I turned down the heat. The gas goes
from the center to the outside, then circles around before being turned back in. The gas
produced is more than a burnt pan. It circles slightly slower than smoke, so it can’t be smoke.
Finally, a crystal like sheet that looks gross as hell is produced - it started bubbling sometimes.
It’s like a thin sheet of plastic.
No reaction with air as expected.
Where I scraped it turns into a brown area - like when the pan is weirdly burnt with a weird
center. The brown air can’t be scraped off.
Salt doesn’t dissolve in it, for some reason. But the hair seems to have disappeared.
I put it on aluminum foil.
I scraped it with a spoon.
It looks like a black solid mess.
It irritated my eyes, it looks like I got some in my eyes. I flushed my eyes with steam, but I
remember acetic acid reacts with water. Oh well.
About 1 g of weird black solid - like tar or bean paste. Or a very dark brown.
I scooped up as much as I could and it didn’t react with steam or hot water on the spoon.

Conclusion:

Sources of Error: Put them both on the same plate - they ended up reacting already.