CHEM 211 Santa Barbara City College Organic Chemistry Recrystalization Lab Report
I hope your second week of classes was good and you are starting to get in the groove of things!!! This week is pretty
fun! We are going to do some exciting stuff at home (but also watch
some cool videos of ME and do a simulation!) This week we will be doing a crystallization of sugar (and/or salt) at home
AND we will be performing a recrystallization of organic material as
a Virtual Labz assignment, as well as introducing melting point!
Again, this simulation is pretty straight forward, but it does include
some other aspects of a laboratory that my videos might not provide,
such as distillation, and nitrogen gas etc. so I want you to do what I
find to be a really fun “experiment” at home…basically we can make
rock candy and eat it afterwards!!! OR make some Kool-Aid or something
haha!
EMAIL ABOUT RECENT LAB
just wanted to give some general feedback as there are some pretty common errors in the lab reports that I want to address now so you can fix them for the upcoming report!
- Clearly and concisely state the objectives of the experiment and how
they will be met. For example, this last one “the objective of this
experiment is to obtain a pure sample of sugar and/or salt via
crystallization techniques using hot solvent (water). The percent
recovery will be obtained and a visual analysis will be performed on the
crystalline structure of each of the salts.” This is literally just
some stuff I put down real quick and can of course be better or just as
good, but different. The point is that there are many points to be made
about one experiment. Techniques, calculations etc. - In the conclusion, restate the objective of the experiment first and
foremost and then you can talk about the data etc. Don’t forget to
mention if the experiment was a success, how you might improve if you
were to do the experiment again, sources of error etc. There’s plenty
to talk about, especially in this last one and especially if it didn’t
work for you! Don’t just state the crystallization didn’t work, discuss
WHY the crystallization didn’t work? I know we are new to this, but
some level of thought needs to be obvious. At first we may hypothesize,
and in the future you can give clear reasons when we gain more
knowledge! 🙂
