Lab 14: Titration Lab

Lab 14: Titration Lab

The purpose of this laboratory experiment was to determine the percentage of ionization of acetic acid. To determine the the percentage ionization we ascertained the amount of a constituent in the solution by measuring the volume of a known concentration of chemical required to complete a reaction. This process is called titration. We titrated the acetic acid with NaOH, a strong base. We poured 50 mL of NaOH into a burette and slowly dripped drops of it into an Erlenmeyer flask that contained acetic acid and an indicator called phenolphthalein so that we would know when the solution had reached equilibrium. All three of our trials resulted in our team missing the point of equilibrium between NaOH and acetic acid, but our last attempt gave us the most reliable molarity of the acetic acid. It was .83M and we had .85M. To calculate the percent ionization of the acetic acid we divided the H30+ concentration by the concentration of NaOH. To determine these concentrations we averaged the molarity of the acid for all three attempts and divided .004 by .81 to get a percent ionization of .49% This number is very low because acetic acid is a very weak acid and does not ionize well.  The hydrogen ions from the acid do not disassociate well because it is so weak, and this results in a low percent ionization.

The Setup

The final product (we missed the point of equilibrium but this was our most accurate attempt)