Start of the Aspirin Lab

Today was a bit of a crazy day. Before I walked into class 5th hour, I had heard from three classes about the pre-lab question and was honestly very nervous for them. Apparently, only one group passed the questions in first and second hour and in the hour before us no one passed them. I felt like I knew the experiment from start to finish, so I felt okay about the pre-lab questions.

Once the bell rang, we got out a piece of paper and Ms. Frankenburg pulled up the questions on the board. I took one look at them and I was relieved because they were both relatively easy questions if you had any idea what the experiment was about: How much salicylic acid do you first start out with? (5 grams), What is the purpose in wearing safely googles in this experiment? (to protect yours eyes from possible fumes or splatter so that they do not get irritated or itch). My partner and I both answered the questions correctly so we were able to move onto the experiment.

(top left) ice cold distilled water, (top right) measuring ice cold distilled water into a graduated cylinder, (bottom left) cooling contents of flask on hot plate, (bottom right) tracing onto the filter paper

(top left) boiling contents of flask in water bath, (top right) weighing watch glass, (bottom left) weighing filter paper, (bottom right) scrub brushes for cleaning dishes

Today we completed steps 2-4 in class. This entailed:

Ryan showing off his proper safety precautions

1. Putting on googles
2. Measuring out 5.00 g of salicylic acid and transferring it to a Erlenmeyer flask, adding 7.00 mL of acetic anhydride (completed by teacher under the fume hood), then finally adding 8 drops of sulfuric acid (as a catalyst) using a pipeter. 
3. Connecting flask to ring stand and heating it in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.
4. Cooling mixture for 3 minuets, transferring contents into a beaker, and adding 15 mL of ice cold distilled water to the cooled mixture under the fume hood. Then, labeling it with a post it note and setting it on top of the lab bench. 

boiling the contents in our Erlenmeyer flask

After this we  cleaned our station and we were done for today.

Data we collected:

1. Mass of starting material: 5.1444 g
2. Mass of watch glass: 36.9207 g
3. Mass of filter paper: .4077 g 

For a little refresher: Watch this video on How to Use an Electronic Balance