The Baking Soda Lab of Dreams

Materials:

• 20 ml vinegar in a large pipette
• Balance
• 100 ml beaker
• 1 gram of baking soda

Procedure:

1. Get a large plastic pipette filled with vinegar. Measure the mass of the pipette and record the mass.
2. Measure the mass of an empty, clean 00 ml beaker.
3. Transfer about 1 gram of baking soda to the beaker. Record the exact mass of the beaker with the powder.
4. Add vinegar, from the pipette, to the beaker. Swirl the contents and observe the reaction. Continue to add vinegar until no more bubbles are produced. This will take a while so be patient and pay close attention to the reaction.
5. Find the mass of the left-over vinegar in the pipette and record. Subtract the original mass of this pipette to find the mass of the vinegar used in the reaction.

From the picture above, you can see the data we collected throughout the lab. When all was said and done, we calculated that the moles of sodium hydrogen carbonate used was .012 moles. We did this by taking the net mass of baking soda (1.01grams) and dividing it by the mass of NaHCO3 (84grams). 

Next, we calculated the grams of acetic acid added to the beaker for the reaction. First, we were given that there are 5grams of acetic acid per 100grams of vinegar. We then decided to set up a ratio, knowing that we had used 13.34grams of vinegar. If there were 5grams of acetic per 100grams of vinegar, then that was equal to xgrams of vinegar per 13.34grams of vinegar. We cross multiplied to get 100x=66.7, thus resulting in x=.667grams of acetic.

We then calculated the moles of acetic acid used in the reaction. We took the .667grams of acetic acid divided by the actual mass of acetic acid (HC2H3O2). This gave us .011g/mol of acetic acid.

We then found the ratio between the moles of sodium hydrogen carbonate and the moles of acetic acid used in the experiment. Since the .011moles of acetic acid was the smallest number, it served as the 1 in our ratio. We then took the .012 moles of sodium hydrogen carbonate and divided it by the .011 moles of acetic acid, which gave us a ration of 1:1. This, our experimental mole ratio, corresponds to the mole ratio of the balanced equation: NaHCO3 + HC2H3O2 -> CO2 + NaC2H3O2 + H2O, which is a 1:1 ratio.