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!

I hate flowers...until now

Before I start, I would like to say sorry to mother nature for killing so many flowers because of this experiment.
One of the days during a short break from school, I was given an assignment to change a white carnation's petals into 3 different colors. The thought of this experiment made me went back to my primary school examination questions, but I have never done the experiment in real life. To make a long story short, I killed the carnation...:(    It was not bloody or with any food coloring spurting everywhere. Therefore, I went to buy a bouquet of flowers.(Didn't want to buy so many but they only sell it that way.) So, I went back home and tried to do the experiment again. Ended up killing over 4 white roses in one day :((((((((((((((((((((((((.   Finally, i realized that my food coloring was too diluted and that it would take forever for the flower to change in color. Finally, i re-bought the food coloring and tried to do the experiment again. In the end, I was proud to announced that it finally worked. After tons of corrections and many dead flowers(I repeat, I am dead sorry), my flower started to change in color. So in my conclusion, we need to have patience, for mother nature is like us. Each type of things need time to complete. So, if you feel frustrated failing at this experiment countless of times, think again who should be the one frustrated...

Plants: Testing leaves for starch

 Just sharing a little from my Sci Bio class, we did a test on starch present in the leaves. We were given the following instructions:
1. Heat half a beaker of water over the Bunsen flame until the water boils.
2. Turn off the Bunsen burner.
3. Put the leaf into the hot water. (This is to make the leaf more permeable by softening it)
4. Put the boiled leaf in a test tube containing some alcohol. Then, place the test tube in the beaker of hot water.(The alcohol would remove the green pigment, chlorophyll from the leaf.)

5.Gently remove the leaf with a pair of forceps then
put it back into the hot water.
6.Remove the leaf and place it in a petri dish. Add a few drops of iodine solution until the leaf is just covered.
7. The leaf should appear blue-black(starch present)


If you see carefully, my leaf did not turn blue-black. Instead, it remained brown. Why? Reason was that the leaf cut from the plant was not fully exposed to the sunlight, which means that the leaf may not have photosynthesized.

Putting Chromatography into action!!!

Remember my previous post about separating the pen ink with chromatography? Well, I did it in an experiment. i was working with my partner on this separation method and it turned out quite fun. We drew a line on the chromatogram and dotted 3 different colours on it. Using the satay stick to hold the chromatogram, we inserted it into a beaker of water without the ink touching the water. Slowly, the ink started to separate into different colours. It was really interesting the realise how each ink colour is invented with!