Katelyn Gularski (Hayly Stein)
PM Tuesday 9/9/14
Introduction The purpose of this lab was to separate the mixture of salt, sand, and shells, so that each could be individually massed and the percentage-by-mass could be determined. The best way to get the sand and shells by themselves is to get rid of the salt. Since salt is dissolvable in water, you use water solubility (Hallows, 2014). Water solubility is defined as a substance being able to completely dissolve in water (“Water Soluble”). So setting up the filtration and having salt completely gone was a physical change (Hallows, 2014). The next two components that are left are sand and the shells. Sand and shells are pretty durable and just wear out over time (Hallows, 2014). If you were walking on the beach and you look down, you see some shells are intact and …show more content…
As for sand, its pretty indestructible, that’s why you walk on sand at the beach. It’s not soluble in water and it doesn’t wear down. To isolate the sand by itself, you need to get rid of the shells. By doing this, you use HCL (Hallows, 2014). A chemical reaction takes place when you get rid of the shells. During this time, when adding the HCL, the contents of acid, shells, water, and sand all bubble and fizzle. What’s happening is that the shells are being broken down and the bubbles will go into the atmosphere, while the rest of the what’s left will be washed out of the sand with water (Hallows, 2014). The only thing that is left now is the sand. That means that sand is pretty indestructible. The reason why sand is pretty indestructible is because, the SiO2 that sand is made up of