The Copper System

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Introduction The copper system in the ecosystem is a topic of interest to many scientists. While we know that copper goes through several series of chemical reactions starting and ending with elemental copper, we do not know the amount of copper we end with at the end. In this experiment, you will use several reactions to show the cycle of copper as well as test the percent yield. Materials and Methods First thing done was the gathering of all supplies necessary to perform this experiment, this includes a 50mL beaker, a hot plate, plastic funnel, aspirator, rubber tubing, ring stand, clamp, iron ring, 10mL graduated cylinder, disposable pipet, suction flask, Buchner funnel, filter paper, distilled water, stirring rod, magnetic stir plate…show more content…
Once a light blue solution remained, 5mL of distilled water was added. This solution was then placed onto the magnetic stir plate and magnetic stir bar was placed in liquid solution. Then to the solution .75g of zinc was added to solution. Then once the solution was colorless, the solution was removed from magnetic stir plate and the liquid was decanted away from the copper. Then 5mL of HCl was added to copper to completely remove all traces of zinc. Once the bubbling had stopped, the rest of the liquid was decanted away from the copper. Then the copper recovery set up was put together using tubing, Buchner funnel, filter paper and suction flask. Then the filter paper was weighed before placing it in the funnel and wetted down. The aspirator was turned to medium high, and then the copper was poured onto wetted filter paper. Using distilled water to remove all copper from the beaker. Once completely on filter paper 6mL of acetone was added to the copper to help dry it out. The filter paper was then removed and set down to dry completely. Once dry the filter paper was weighed with the copper on it and subtracted from the original weight to see the amount of copper left after…show more content…
In this step, as we watched the chemical reaction with the solids, we noticed a thinning in the substance. Also, the solids became lighter and moved to the top. When stirred, the solution began to turn green and then back to light blue, where copper began in the end of the first step. A combination reaction took place, and the balanced equation is: CuOs+H2SO4aq→CuSO4aq+H2O(I) Following this step, step 5 began, in which we added 300 mg of zinc to the solution. Once the zinc was added slowly to the solution, a gas was released and the solution began to change colors. The colors that occurred were light blue to light grey, to a clear blue, back to a dark blue, then grey color. Once the stirring process ended, the solution was slightly blue and not colorless. There were solids in the bottom. The reaction that occurred with this step was displacement and metathesis in the form of gas formation. The balanced equation of this step looks as follows: CuSO4aq+Zns→Cus+ZnSO4(aq) Once this step was finished, the remaining copper was retrieved. First, to recover the copper HCl was added to remove all the zinc. When this happened, a yellow tint was observed in the liquid, as well as bubbling as the zinc was broken down. Once the copper dried out, it was weighed and came to a total of 240 mg. When the percent yield was performed, it was found that only 9.6% was

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