Sunday 18 August 2013

Separating salt and sand

 Hey what is up guys, I recently just did an experiment in school and would like to share it with you. Our teacher gave us 30 minutes and using the apparatus we had, we must separate a salt-sand solution using separation methods. It was quite tough as usual for we had to think of the methods ourselves.
Me and my partner then decided that we can filtrate the salt-sand solution with water and evaporate it afterwards, we can get salt as our final result.

First of, we failed a couple of times, still we did it again but did not had enough time. But at least we
 our best. Anyways, we first poured water into the salt-sand solution and stirred the solution. After that, we folded the filter paper into a cone shape and put it in the filter funnel, letting a retort stand hold it. We also put a 250 cm3 beaker below the filter funnel before pouring the solution through the paper. When we were done, the filtrate that we got contains salt and water mixed together. This method is got filtration.
After that, we had to separate the water away from the salt to get salt at the end. So, we poured the filtrate into an evaporating dish and heated it with a bunsen burner. We also put on goggles as particles
would actually come out of the evaporating dish during the process. In the end, our experiment failed for we had accidentally put too much water before the experiment started. But my friends manged to obtain salt, using a limited amount of water in the process. Still, our steps were correct with this separation method known as evaporation. Honestly, this was quite challenging. Reason is that I am not too good at exploring by myself. But as always, failure is the key to success. So I would take this experiment as an experience and master it in the upcoming future. If you would like to leave a comment if you have done something like this before, you can share your experience too. Thanks for taking a look!

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