Stoichiometry Lab Report

In order to begin this experiment, first one must find the balanced chemical equation for the reaction which occurs between the aluminum and copper (II) chloride. This balanced equation being 2Al(s)+3CuCl2 (aq)3Cu(s)+2AlCl3 (aq). After finding this equation, one must use the process of stoichiometry in order to find how many grams of aluminum are needed in order to produce 0.15 grams of copper. In this experiment, the purpose was to produce between 0.1 and 0.2 grams of copper, so one should attempt to produce 0.15 grams of copper seeing as it is the average of those two numbers. The first step in the stoichiometric process which one has to complete is finding how many grams of copper are in one mole of copper. This calculation being15 grams

After placing the aluminum in said beaker, one should gather a stir stick and stir the solution in order to speed up the reaction. One should stir the solution until there are no visible silver pieces of aluminum left in the beaker of what was the copper (II) chloride solution. When there are no visible silver pieces of aluminum left in the beaker, this means that the reaction has occurred. After the reaction has occurred, one needs to separate the products, which are copper and aluminum chloride, from each other in order to see how much copper was able to be produced. Seeing as the products are a solid in the form of copper and a liquid in the form of aluminum chloride, the process of filtration can be used to separate them. The process of filtration can be used seeing as the copper particles will be caught by the filter because they are too large to pass through it, while the aluminum chloride particles are small enough to pass through the filter. In order to filter the products, one needs to obtain a funnel, filter paper, and a clean

After seemingly all of the aluminum chloride has been funneled from the copper, one should take the filter paper out of the funnel and let it dry. One needs to let the filter paper dry before weighing it to see how much copper was produced in order to allow the water to evaporate. If one were to weigh the funnel paper while it was wet, they would not get an accurate measurement of how much copper was produced because the scale would show a reading of the amount of copper as well as the amount of water on the filter paper. Once the filter paper has fully dried, one can then weigh the paper in order to determine how much copper was produced. In order to do this one should take a scale and obtain a clean piece of filter paper along with the one with the copper on it. One should weigh the clean piece of filter paper, then the paper used for the experiment. After obtaining both of these weights, one should subtract the weight of the clean paper from the weight of the paper used in the experiment in order to determine the difference between the two sheets of filter paper. This difference represents the amount of copper which was produced in the