Dehydration Of Hydrates Lab Report

Hydrates are names given to compounds that contain water molecules with the formula of H2O, usually containing a fixed value of water mass percentage (Kauffman, 1998). The experiment performed consisted of three main parts. First, different hydrated salts were heated in test tubes with a Bunsen burner in order to determine observational changes for before, during, and after dehydration. After dehydrating the salts, water was added back into the test tubes to determine if rehydration was possible for the various salts. Next, several trials of dehydration of the hydrate copper sulfate were performed, with mass being measured along the way to measure the amount of mass lost and the percent of the mass that is composed of water for each sample.

The values of mass percent lost by dehydration for each trial were found to be relatively consistent and accurate in comparison to the known value of the mass percent of water for copper sulfate (36.08%). This is expected because the values should be at the same fixed values across the samples, as they are all using the same sample of the hydrate copper sulfate. We can assume that if the experimental value was lower than the known value, there was still some water present in the salt that was not fully dehydrated. If the experimental value was higher than the known value, we can assume that heat was applied for too long of a duration, leading to decomposition of the copper sulfate samples. To get more accurate results with less variation, experimenters could exert extra effort to ensure that variables such as duration of heating and temperature of the flame remain exactly consistent across the trials. Additionally, there could be slight errors when recording data for the experiment due to residual amounts of copper sulfate left in the crucible between