Experiment # 4

Mass and Mole Relationship in a Chemical Reaction:

Precipitation of Calcium Carbonate

Analysis:

1. If the solid calcium carbonate precipitate was not completely dry when it was measured with the
final mass of the beaker and filter paper, then this would cause the percent yield of the CaCO3 to
increase. Since the calcium carbonate would not be completely dry, then there would be H2O
ions still in the precipitate meaning a higher weight. If this increase in weight would be used in
percent yield, then the equation of actual over theoretical would result in a higher percent yield.

2. If a student did not rinse the precipitate in the beaker with distilled water and decant one last time
before allowing it to dry (step 13), then this could result in an increase by mass of the precipitate.
This can be justified by the reasoning that the precipitate would still contain NaCl ions and if not
washed properly, could be included in the measurement resulting again in a higher mass which
would increase a student’s measurements and calculations for the actual and percentage yield.
This is because even though the H2O will evaporate off, what would be left would still be the
NaCL and the CaCO3. For example, if a student did not do this step, then these NaCl ions would
still be found in the dried precipitate of CaCO3. When the measurement for this precipitate is
then taken for later measurements, it would result in a higher mass. When this higher mass would
be used as the actual yield over the theoretical yield, it would cause the percent yield to increase
as well.

3. Even after filtering the solution and waiting for the water to evaporate, the solution collected
under the funnel in the 250mL beaker would still not be comprised of pure NaCl. There are two
reasons that explain this. One, under the circumstances and equipment used; there would be no
way to achieve 100% recovery of the CaCO3 meaning that some would still be found in the
beaker. Secondly, there is an excess reagent in the experiment meaning that it would still be
found in the water as it goes through the filter. This excess reagent in this experiment would be
the Na2CO3 and the only way to do this with out having excess would be to precisely use the
correct amounts of the reactant. This would be very difficult to do and since this was not done, it
would result in the solution in the beaker to not only have NaCl but also CaCO3.

Pre-Lab Questions

1. The balance net ionic equation of the precipitation reaction would be:

2. The reason for decanting a solution into a filter is that it lets the solution filter through the filter
paper first before the solids resulting in a faster filter and less time need for the precipitate to dry.

3. It is important to add a small volume of solution to a filtering apparatus at a time so that not to
clog up the filter paper which would cause a longer waiting period unless when using a suction
vacuum and also because it could overflow the filter paper resulting in the need to re-filter the
solution or if not filtered again a loss of precipitate.