IA Chemistry Help

[Anne]

Hey,

 

I am currently in the process of my chemistry IA. I have chosen a subject that I was interrested in which was the change of a flame's color depending on the salt. The procedure involves me lighting a bunsen burner and afterwards spraying 7 different liquid salts onto it and observing the change in color. The problem is that with a simple experiment like this, I am afraid of not having enough data. 

 

The salts I used were:

KOH - orange/yellow

KCl - Orange/purple/yellow

HCl - orange/yellow

HNO3 - green

Na2SO4 -yellow/orange

CaCl2 - yellow/orange

H2SO4 - yellow/orange

 

Is there any qualitative data that I could incorprate? Any help is appreciated. Someone recommended to incorprate the emission spectrum, however I do not know how.

 

Thank you

 

Edited May 17, 2016 by Anne

[pfftttp]

It looks like you only have qualitative data, which is the color. How will you be doing quantitative data? Will you be using a colorimeter? That would give you the number on the emmisiom spectrum. I would ask if your school has acess to that. And another way to make up for lack of data would be to do like 10 trials each. Doing multiple trials can help a lot. Assuming that you use them to come to a meaningful and precise conclusion. Sorry, im just a student in the program, so im not sure how helpful i can be. 

[AnjaDe]

I think that the question is a bit too vague, you should perhaps take the salt of the same anion or cation and change the other and see if there is a difference... Also, the emission spectrum seems fine, but your slats are so different and I don't know if you can conclude anything, maybe take first group metals or only second group metals or successive transition metals and have some data which in the end you can say that any difference comes because of a reason and not have random results... Hopefully that helps