The overall purpose of this lab was to develop a lab procedure in order to separate and measure the mass of each containment obtained the provided sample.
In addition, this experiment was conducted in order to provide the EPA with a plan to remove all contaminants from a heterogenous mixture which purifies the water, making it accessible for the society. Furthermore, the sample consisted of the following contaminants, sand, rock, wood, plastic, salt, water, and an unknown metal. When it came to separating the contaminants, the wood and plastic were taken out through the use of tweezers, while the rocks were separated by decanting the mixture of sand and rocks from the water. Also, once the rocks had been filtered out, the sand was separated by the
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All things considered, the results proved that the unknown substance or element was barium since the calculated density was 3.9 g/mL. To expand upon, the density was calculated by measuring the mass of the metal and using the displacement method to determine the volume of the metal. Also, the best method of disposing the storm water would be to contact a Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) so that they could put it through a purification process, making all that water reusable. Meanwhile, the percent of recovery was calculated by the formula Percent Recovery=observed valuetrue value *100%. Furthermore, according to the pie chart created in the data analysis, the sample given contained of the percent by mass for metal to be 5.2%, salt was 3.3%, wood was 3.1%, plastic was 4.5%, rock was 12.5%, sand was 11.8%, and water was 59.6%. Also, the formula used to calculate the percent error was Percent Error=observed value-true valuetrue value*100%. When it came to the results, the calculated percent error was 6.65% for sand, 0.60% for wood,1.57% for plastic, 3.13% for metal,