Formula of a Chloride Lab

(At the end of the post there are two links that lead to to websites/videos that can help you understand the lab or how to calculate the answer)

(Sorry my pictures are out of order a little bit, Blogger does not let me position them the way I would like. I tried to label them as best I could)

The first thing we had to do today in order to do the lab was answer the pre-lab questions correctly. I was really nervous for these pre-labs because I was trying to calculate the practice questions and I was getting very confused. Personally, I felt like they were different than the ones we did in class. After the question came on the screen, I felt better about solving it. Fortunately, I correctly solved the question and my partner and I were able to go to lab!

 INTO LAB WE GO!

Today our general procedure (pictures included at the end) was to: 

1. Find the mass of a dry 100 mL beaker.

2. Place a piece of zinc into the beaker.

3. Determine mass of beaker plus zinc.

4. Add 10 mL of 3M HCL into the beaker.

5. Gently heat mixture on a hot plate until all of the zinc had dissolved and the water boiled away. (you should be left with a salt)

6. Heat substance for 5-10 minutes (or until it turns white) on high 

7. Cool for a couple minutes.
8. Find the mass of the beaker and its contents.

3M HCL

Zinc Dissoving

Starting to boil

Zinc in Beaker

Pouring 

Boiling

Dissolved Zinc

Final product of Salt

Cooling the Substance

Our Data and What is Means

Data Table and Calculations of the Amount of Zinc and Chlorine in the Salt

Calculation to find the Empirical Formula

For those that were unable to complete the lab here is a link to a video of what we did:Formula of a Chloride Lab (keep in mind that we used different measurements)
If you are having trouble calculating empirical formulas, here is a link to a video to help you understand the steps and to take a quiz to test your knowledge: Internet Science Room or ChemTeam