Diana Phillips

Pradeep Karunaratne
Chemistry 10.2

Magnesium and Hydrochloric Acid: Percentage Purity

Aim/Research Question: How can the reaction between Hydrochloric Acid and Magnesium (Mg + 2 HCl
> MgCl 2 + H 2) be used to find the percentage purity of Magnesium?

Hypothesis:
I believe that if values of 1g, 1.5g and 2g of Mg powder each react with 75ml of 2HCL, the mass of product
produced will follow an upward trend starting from the lowest mass of magnesium. This is because the more
moles a substance contains, more collisions will occur between the molecules, thus resulting in more
product. Furthermore, I believe the actual yield results from my practical will be lower than the theoretical
yield as some of the magnesium may remain unreacted when the reaction is complete, as only theoretically
will everything react.

I believe that if I calculate the theoretical yield of MgCl2 from this reaction, I can divide it by the averaged
mass of MgCl2 produced from the practical and multiply it by 100 to find the percentage purity of
magnesium. This is because the theoretical yield is calculated according to the starting amount of the limiting
reagent, magnesium, and thus when compared to the actual yield, it will provide the efficiency of a chemical
reaction.

Variables:
Independent: Surface area of magnesium
Dependant: Rate of reaction
Controlled: Volume of acid, mass of reactant, room temperature

Apparatus:
9g of Magnesium powder (1g per trial)
Scissors
Weighing Scale
675ml of 2M Hydrochloric Acid (75ml per trial)
1 100ml beaker
1 weighing boat
1 spatula

Method:
1) Ensure that all ACs/fans etc. are turned off and you are in an environment approximately 25 degrees
Celsius.
2) Measure exactly 1g of Magnesium into the weighing boat and place it on the scale, as depicted in
diagram A below:

1 g of Mg in
weighing boat

Weighing scale
reading
3) Measure 75ml of 2M Hydrochloric Acid into a 100ml beaker and proceed to place this on the scale too.
Proceed to zero the scale, as depicted in diagram B below:

HCL in beaker

Mg in weighing
boat

4) Lift the weighing boat and gently empty its contents into the hydrochloric acid and wait 1 minute for the
reaction to complete.
5) After the hydrogen gas has completely left and the mass reading of the remaining MgCl2 on the scale is
stable, record it in the appropriate spot in the table created prior to the practical.
6) Repeat steps 2-5 twice to in order to complete 3 trials for the 1g value.
7) Repeat steps 2-6, except for 1.5g of Magnesium and then 2g of Magnesium.

Data Collection:

Quantitative:

Raw data:
Amount of MgCl2
produced:

Magnesium: (g) Trial 1 (g) Trial 2 (g) Trial 3 (g)

1 -0.35 -0.39 -0.43

1.5 -0.53 -0.54 -0.49

2 -0.65 -0.73 -0.67

Mass of MgCl2 Produced

Percentage
Magnesium (g) Average Mass of Processed Average Mass Theoretical Mass of Purity
MgCl2 (g) of MgCl2 (g) MgCl2 (g)

1 -0.39 3.90 3.91 99.74

1.5 -0.52 5.20 5.88 88.51
2 -0.68 6.80 7.83 86.81
Processed data:
Qualitative:
When the magnesium is dropped into the acid, the reaction produces visible bubbles of hydrogen gas as
shown in the image below:

Conclusion:
The purpose of this experiment was to find the percentage purity of the reaction Mg + 2 HCl > MgCl 2 + H
2. My hypothesis predicted that the mass of product produced will follow an upward trend starting from the
lowest mass of magnesium because the more moles a substance contains, more collisions will occur
between the molecules, thus resulting in more product. In order to find the percentage purity based on the
results I have obtained, my hypothesis stated that I will average the trials and divide the actual yield by the
percentage yield calculated beforehand for each value of magnesium.

Based on the percentage purity results I received, I can see that the methods I followed and proposed in my
hypothesis were correct. As my results were in minus values, I had to multiply them by 10 to compare with
the theoretical value. The percentage purity levels were quite high, especially for the 1g value as it was
99.74% pure. As I continued the experiment the percentage purity followed a downward trend, but it should
have been the same. The reasons for this are probably human error which I have mentioned in the
evaluation of my conclusion.

Evaluation:

Reliability:
I believe that my method provided data that was repeatable and effectively defines how to make precise
measurements. The range of values we used was appropriate as 1, 1.5 and 2 are relatively consecutive
figures and thus allow trends to be examined. In order to calculate my data, I had to multiply the minus
values from my experiment by 10. When comparing the values I noticed that the percentage purity is high,
thus meaning the variables were controlled well through my method.

Validity:
I feel that the validity of my experiment could have been improved more if we controlled the time,
temperature to a larger extent. I did not allow each reaction an equivalent time to complete as we were under
time constraints and we only gave each reaction around 1 minute to complete. Sometimes this was reduced
to about 50 seconds thus we did not fully control this variable as it was not timed by a stopwatch. I believe
that this may have contributed to the downward trend in percentage purity as we the more trials we
conducted, the less precise our measurements were. In addition to this, the temperature within the room
continued to change throughout our experiment which we noticed had an effect on our data as when the
experiment began, the AC was on directly in front of our experiment and it took longer for the reaction to
complete. When we moved our apparatus away from the AC and turned it off, we noticed that the mass
reading on the weighing scale became stable a lot faster. I also believe that for the last 3 trials some of the
product may have been lost when the Mg was transferred from the weighing boat into the HCL beaker. This
happened for other trials except we re-did them, whereas towards the end of the experiment we were
running out of time.

Improvements to the method:

Use a stopwatch to control the time variable and allow the reaction to completely finish by checking when
the bubbles have stopped and ensuring that the number on the weighing scale is stable before we move
on to the next. The amount of time we wait should be 5 minutes for 1g, 8 minutes for 1.5g and 10 for 2g.
The reason Ive said this is because the larger amounts of magnesium will have more collisions and thus
take more time to complete, and even though the amount is not increased by a lot this will control the time
variable effectively.
The best way to control the temperature variable is to do the lab in a room that is 25 degrees Celcius
without any other experiments that produce a lot of gas so that we dont open the windows in the
classroom. The ACs should be off and the temperature should remain the same in the room until the end
of the experiment.
Make sure that we carefully empty the weighing boat into the HCL beaker and tap it slowly vs. pouring it
straight into the substance.