型

Introduction:

The idea of an experiment with equilibrium come from the research of Haber process, which is
the first time I learnt about equilibrium, immediately I thought it is an interesting topic because
of the product could go back and make reactant as well. Besides the formation of ammonia, I
also found other applications of equilibrium, such as drying clothes. Furthermore, I chose copper
for the experiment because I was very curious about why the statue of liberty is green, even
though it was made of copper. The reason for this is because the copper was being oxidized, I
had also seen the same effect from the preparation of my experiment, where there were a few
coppers chloride powder turned into green after a short time.

Research question

1. How much water is required for the color of mixture of acetone and copper chloride to
stop reacting (Stop changing color)
2. If the original color is yellow, what would the trend of absorbency of red, blue and green
color be, and what color would it be at the end?

Background information:

Equilibrium between the color of copper chloride and its concentration:

For this experiment, there are several equilibrium equations relating to the color of the mixture.
The table below shows the color relating to the concentration of copper chloride:

[CuCl3(H2O)]- +H2O ⇌ [CuCl2(H2O)2]+ Cl- Yellow to orange

[CuCl2(H2O)2] +H2O⇌ [Cu(H2O)5Cl]+Cl- Orange to green
[Cu (H2O)5Cl]+ H2O⇌[Cu(H2O6)]2++Cl- Green to blue

We can see that there are three equilibrium equation in total, varies from yellow to blue as the
concentration of copper chloride decrease. Therefore, the ligand formed by complex ion copper
and chlorine at the beginning are being replaced by water. Furthermore, from the section 15 of
the data booklet, we can also see the energy difference of Cl- is less than the difference from
water, as the experiment carries on, more water would replace Cl- as new ligand, leading to an
absorbance of higher energy (shorter wavelength). As a result, it would be seen as the color
opposite to the color of light with such wavelength.

Absorbency and transmittance:

The measurement of color involves using a colorimeter that measures the color of the mixture. It
measures the absorbency of red, blue and green lights of that mixture, a diagram of colorimeter is
shown in the figure below. In the figure, the light source of the colorimeter of either red, blue or
green will pass through the sample, the intensity of the color is measured before and after the
sample, 𝐼 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 are used to denote the two values respectively. The transmittance of the color
is then measured by . When the transmittance is 0, or 0%, it means all the visible light is
 ˋ
iii
absorbed by the sample. For example, a black sample will have 0 or very little transmittance in
all red, blue, green as it absorbs them, while a light-colored sample will have a higher
transmittance.

Figure 1: Diagram of how colorimeter functions

Qi
Methodology: Ltp IN

Variables:
Independent variable: Concentration of copper, or in other words, the volume of water appeared
in the mixture of copper chloride and acetone. The concentration of copper is changed by adding
water, which decreases its concentration. I would use titration to make the data more accurate.
For this experiment, I am going to add 1 cm3 of water at each time.

Dependent variable: Wavelength of visible light absorbed. As the volume of water increase, the
concentration of copper ions decreases, and therefore the color would change. I am going to
measure the absorbency of red, blue and green colors by using a colorimeter

Control variable:
Controlled variable
Volume of acetone and copper chloride in all
Reason
why t.cn tu
This will be kept the same because if the Fan
experiment volume or the concentration varies, the
particle would experience different rate of
collision according to Le Chatelet’s
principle1. Therefore, making the result

n_n a cone
nfae inaccurate. During the experiment, 100 cm3 of
acetone and 3 grams of copper chloride will
be mixed up and 20 cm3 of the mixture will
be used for the experiment, this can reduce
wlnnaco the error for the concentration significantly

ofcue o
1 “Le Chatelier’s Principle.” Chemistry LibreTexts, 2 Oct. 2013,
chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Mo
dules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Equilibria/Le_Chateliers_Principle#:~:text=Le%20Chatelier

oipom.mil
%27s%20Principle%20Fundamentals.
 三 8012
compared to mixing the acetone and copper
chloride every time.
Room temperature The temperature would not only affect the
rate of reaction, but also shifting the
equilibrium, therefore the color would
change. Therefore the room temperature will
be kept the same throughout the experiment,
as it is being done in one day, the shift in
equilibrium caused by difference in
temperature would be negligible.

Apparatus:
Equipment Chemicals
A calorimeter Distilled water

OO
Several cuvettes Copper chloride
1 Glass beaker Acetone (0.1M)
Burette clamp and stand
Burette (±0.05𝑚𝐿)
Conical Flask (±0.05𝑚𝐿)

Procedure: sf.in iiiiii

no_nan
nfe
- Mixing 3 grams of copper chloride and 100 cm3 of acetone to produce a yellow-colored
liquid. Split the liquid into 5 equal mixtures with volume of 20 cm3.

管 -

-
For each mixture, take a few drops of them and put them into glass and see the
transmittance of each color by the colorimeter.
Put the drops of mixture back and add 1 cm3 of water using titration and measure the
color of the new mixture.
- Repeat the process when 8 cm3 of water is added, where the color of the mixture is blue.

Risk assessment:

Safety concerns:
- Acetone considered as hazardous. As breathing in high amounts of acetone can irritate
nose, throat, lungs and eyes, which might eventually cause headache or vomiting. 2
During my experiment I also found that the smell of acetone is revolting, in order to
minimize this effect, the experiment area will be ventilated, and a mask will be worn
throughout the experiment to prevent large amount of smell from acetone being breathed
in, wearing mask also allow me to prevent breathe in copper chloride powder which can

2
Delaware Health and Social Services. 24/7 Emergency Contact Number: 1-888-295-5156. Jan. 2015.
 cause coughing and wheezing.
- Acetone is considered as highly flammable 3, therefore during the experiment all materials
that can potentially cause fire will be kept away.

Ethical and environmental concerns:

- There are no ethical concerns in this experiment because there is no people or animals
involved in this experiment. However, acetone and copper chloride can both cause
pollution to groundwater even if only small amount is treated unsafely, therefore they
will be disposed after diluting them with large amount of water.

Hypothesis:

Question 1:
From the background knowledge, as the concentration of copper is the same, we can see that 3
moles of water are added in order to make the original complex ion ‘[CuCl3(H2O)]-’ into the final
complex ion ‘[Cu(H2O)6]2+’ as the ligand of this complex ion is all water, no further reactions
would be made if we keep adding water, therefore I can deduce that 5 moles of water is required
to completely react with one mol copper chloride added. Since we used 0.6 grams of copper
chloride for each experiment, which means there are approximately 0.04 mol of copper, therefore
by the ratio, 0.6 mol of water is required to add until the reaction stop. As pure distilled water
would contain approximately 55.5 mol of hydrogen dioxide ion per liter, I am expecting around
10 cm3 of the distilled water added.
[CuCl3(H2O)]- +H2O ⇌ [CuCl2(H2O)2]+ Cl-
+ -
I[CuCl2(H2O)2] +H2O⇌ [Cu(H2O)5Cl] Cl
[Cu (H2O)5 Cl]+ H2O⇌[Cu(H2O)6]2++Cl-

Question 2:

The water is going to decrease the wavelength of the absorbed light as a result of an increase in
energy difference. Since we know already that the mixture of the acetone and copper chloride is
yellow, from data 15 of the formula booklet, we would see a decrease of wavelength of the
energy being absorbed, so the color we see would change clockwise, so I would deduce that the
final color of it would be either blue or violet.

Raw data:

Red:

3 Government of Canada, Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. “CCOHS: Acetone.” Www.ccohs.ca, 5 Apr.
2023,
www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/chem_profiles/acetone.html#:~:text=What%20are%20fire%20hazards%20and%
20extinguishing%20media%20for%20acetone%3F.
 Volume of Percentage of transmittance (±0.5%)
distilled Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5
water
added
(cm3)
0 46.0 43.9 44.5 45.0 47.4
1 43.4 45.3 48.2 49.4 54.3
2 55.1 51.8 57.2 55 61.1
ˋ
3 62.4 65.6 70.8 71品 71.4
4 69.1 69.1 74.3 71.8 74.2
5 72.2 74.7 80.4 76.9 78.7
6 77.3 79.6 83.4 81.1 83.2
7 81.8 82.5 85.5 80.2 84.2
8 82.7 84.9 89.7 81.4 85.2

Blue:

Volume of Percentage of transmittance (±0.5%)

distilled Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5
water
added
(cm3)
0 50.3 52.7 52.4 45.2 51.6
1 53 62.9 69.1 70 77.5
2 82.6 77.8 84.6 81.1 88.9
3 91.0 93.3 95.6 97.3 97.8
4 95.5 95.0 97.4 97.3 98.8
5 96 96.3 99.5 96.5 99.9
6 97.5 98.6 99.3 97.8 100.6
7 101.5 on o99.3 97.8 92.8 100.5
8 98.3 99.6 100.1 93.4 99.8

Green:

Volume of Percentage of transmittance (±0.5%)

distilled Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5
water
added
(cm3)
0 1.1 1.3 1.4 1.0 1.3
1 1.4 2.9 4.1 4.5 8.0
2 19.2 17.3 24.9 14.9 28.6
 3 50 66.3 79.1 78.8 75.5
4 80 83.6 97.4 81.1 86.4
5 89.5 96 99.5 95.3 96.8
6 97.5 101.2 99.3 98.7 101.9
7 101.5 104.5 97.8 93.2 103
1 0
8 98.3 103.2 106.5
01
94.5

105
0195
100.3

- Observations: few variations after 4 cm3 added, usually a big increase of all three colors
3
after 3 cm is added.
- Red colored data is considered as anomalies, so they are not calculated during the
processing data

Processing data:

Formula of finding the average:

𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 1 + 𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 2 + 𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 3 + 𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 4 + 𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 5
5

Example: average percentage of red transmittance when 0 cm3 of distilled water is added
(initial) =
46.0 + 43.9 + 44.5 + 45.0 + 47.4
= 45.36 ≈ 45.4%
5

Formula of finding absolute uncertainty:

𝑀𝑎𝑥𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 − 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙
2
Example: absolute uncertainty of the percentage of red transmittance
when 0 cm3 of distilled water is added (initial) =
47.4 − 43.9
= 1.75 ≈ 1.8𝑐𝑚
2
Formula of finding percentage uncertainty:
𝐴𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑦
× 100%
𝐴𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒
Example: percentage uncertainty of the percentage of red transmittance when 0 cm3 of distilled
water is added (initial) =
1.8
× 100% ≈ 4.0%
45.4

Formula of finding standard deviation (in this experiment):

∑
(𝑇 − 𝜇)
𝜎=
5
𝜎 = 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 (%)
 𝜇 = 𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒

𝑇 = 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑇𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑖

For all processed data, the value will be kept in one decimal places as the uncertainty of data is 0.5
cm3.

Average value and standard deviation:

Volume of distilled water Average transmittance of red

added (cm3) (%) Standard Deviation (%)
0 45.36 1.38
1 48.12 4.19
2 56.04 3.42
3 68.24 li 4.04
4 71.7 2.58
5 76.58 3.24
6 80.92 2.56
7 82.84 2.07
8 84.78 3.17

Volume of distilled water Average transmittance of

added (cm3) blue. (%) Standard Deviation (%)
0 50.44 3.07
1 69.9 9.15
2 83 4.13
3 95 2.85
4 96.8 1.54
5 97.64 1.89
6 98.76 1.25
7 98.38 3.41
8 98.24 2.79

Volume of distilled water Average transmittance of

added (cm3) green (%) Standard Deviation (%)
0 1.22 0.16
1 4.18 2.45
2 20.98 5.63
3 77.8 12.29
 4 85.7 6.99
5 95.42 3.67
6 99.72 1.81
7 100 4.54
8 100.56 4.59

Absolute and percentage uncertainty:

Red:
Volume of distilled water Percentage uncertainty (% of
added (cm3) Absolute uncertainty (%) average transmittance)
0 1.8 4.7
1 5.5 11.4
2 4.7 8.4
3 4.5 6.6
4 2.6 3.6
5 4.1 5.4
6 3.1 3.8
7 2.7 3.3
8 4.2 5.0

Blue:
Volume of distilled water Absolute uncertainty of Percentage uncertainty (% of
added (cm3) transmittance (%) average transmittance)
0 2.5 5.0
1 7.3 10.7
2 5.6 6.7
3 3.4 3.6
4 1.7 1.8
5 1.5 1.5
6 1.6 1.6
7 4.4 4.5
8 3.4 3.5
ㄆㄨ

Green:
Volume of distilled water Percentage uncertainty (% of
added (cm3) Absolute uncertainty (%) average transmittance)
0 0.2 16.3
1 3.3 78.9
 2 6.9 32.9
3 1.8 2.3
4 8.7 10.1
5 5.0 5.2
6 4.4 4.4
7 5.6 5.6
8 6.0 6.0

Graph:

吢
Analysis:

tend
 1

The three data shows that the absorbency of color red, blue and green are all increasing to a very
high value. With the absorbency of blue and green had reached nearly 100% with few distilled
waters added. More specifically, the sample will absorb few blue lights with 3 cm3 distilled
water added, and it will stop absorbing green light when 4-5 cm3 of distilled water added. This
suggests that the sample presents a mixture of color of blue and green. The red transmittance
also shows an increasing trend from the beginning of 45% to 85%. The trend of increasing
absorbency in all three colors shows that the sample is becoming more transparent, which can be
suggested by not only the decrease of the concentration of copper and chlorine due to the
addition of distilled water. The addition of 8 cm3 of distilled water will decrease the
concentration of copper and chloride by nearly one third as the original volume of the mixture
was 20 cm3. As a result, as there are less concentration of Cu2+ and Cl-, which appears blue and
yellow in aqueous solution respectively, the color of these mixtures will be less obvious, hence
less light can be absorbed by it, and the absorbency increase.

The water had replaced chlorine anion to change the color. This change of color had can support
my second hypothesis as the color changes clockwise from the color wheel because as mentioned
in the background information, the water ligands replaced chloride ligands because in the
diagram, 6 H2O ligands can be connected to the central copper ion, while only 4 chloride ions
can be connected to copper ion. As more water ligands are connected, it becomes stable, which is
preferred by the copper ion. As a result, the water molecule causes a higher energy difference
between two sets of d-orbitals in the complex ion, therefore more energy is absorbed, which
decreases the energy’s wavelength absorbed. This leads to a change in color from dark yellow to
light blue, which had also supported my second hypothesis.

Furthermore, red transmittance still shows an increasing trend after 8 cm3 of water added, while
blue and green transmittance had reached 100% with only a 3-4 cm3of distilled water added. This
can suggest that the overall equilibrium reaction has come to an end after 8 cm3of distilled water.
This can suggest that the reaction can still process as the transmittance of red light might still
increase, however as there is no further experiment for this, the investigation failed to provide a
firm answer to the first hypothesis. The difference between the value of distilled water added
during the experiment, 10 cm3 and the actual value before the process end should be close to
some extent from the trend of red absorbency, as it starts to become steady after 8 cm3 of water is
added. The difference between the two values can be suggested by that the concentration of
distilled water of the environment is different from the concentration I used for the hypothesis,
but the magnitude of the difference is limited as the increase of red, blue and green transmittance
had become stable after 8 cm3 of distilled water added.

Evaluation:

Limitation:
- The overall data had a few random errors during the first or second trials. This is because
I am not very experienced at making mixtures and doing titrations for the experiment,
which increased the random errors occurred during the experiment. This limitation had
been improved throughout the experiment as I practiced more times on this experiment,
which had reduced the uncertainty found from my data significantly, from the table, most
of the percentage uncertainty of data is kept within 10%, which shows my data is reliable.
 - The uncertainty was extremely high in the transmittance of green light, as at the
beginning, almost no green light had been transmitted through the sample, so the value of
it was very small. Which had increased the percentage uncertainty. The percentage
uncertainty can be reduced if I change the measurement of the color from transmittance
to absorbance, as the lower of transmittance of a color, the more it will be absorbed, this
will therefore reduce the overall uncertainty.
-
Strength:
- The colorimeter can track a color accurately compared to human eyes or other apparatus.
This reduced the systematic error appeared during the experiment. Despite that the
colorimeter can’t detect the actual color of the sample, the amount of red, blue and green
light can still be detected as the more transmittance of a color, the more that color is
contained in the sample.
- The repetition reduced the random error because it helps me to find any anomalies and
the random error occurred during the experiment, which would make my result more
reliable.

Further study:

In future experiments, I have noticed that the energy difference of the ligand does not necessarily
correlates the wavelength of light that it absorbs. Therefore, I can continue explore how does
different ligands effect the wavelength emitted and absorbed in order to promote transitional
metals’ d-block by looking at its colors by looking at other factors such as the molecular
geometry. I can also change the transitional metal that I am using for the experiment, I can
replace copper metal by iron or nickel, and measure what their color looks like under the same
concentration of copper in this experiment.

For equilibrium, I can measure how the temperature change the color presented in the
experiment by boiling or cooling the mixture of copper chloride and distilled water.

Bibliography:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864820300250
“Transition Metals - Ligand Substitution Reactions (A-Level Chemistry).” Study Mind,

studymind.co.uk/notes/ligand-substitution-

reactions/#:~:text=Ligand%20substitution%20reactions%20in%20transition.
 4

Introduction

Backqwwel Research

Research Quentin
S
I r
iypoelen.is

Metwdohg 1

Varible 2

Apisattusechemilel 3

pwceclue LI
Risk Assessment

Data Clleetnrni
Daee.pro
cesr 1
Calculeti 2
Into peutat.in

Conclusion

Evaluatnr 1

Valictr z.im
pwer.net

Further In
veniqat.is
世 tr

Strength
trruh 多 lover the random enov

是 other then Lumen eyes

Color
nay

可
fㄇㄧīˊĒ

henmetoweesn iiEnjwn
enoru
meui
opw col.tn
vedre
beaker
the solutions then

1 瞧

veto
式
事
9_
t.nl β
1
Exo m

TepO.is