SPA Skill 3 Additional Practice

Brass is an alloy made of zinc and copper. It is a very useful metal as it is fairly hard but malleable. Brass has great acoustic properties and is used to make many musical instruments.The malleability of brass is dependent on the zinc (and copper) composition. A brass alloy that contains more zinc is less malleable.

A testing company has received 3 samples of brass alloys from 3 manufacturers.

Devise an experiment to determine the percentage composition of copper in the alloy so that the most malleable one can be chosen.

Post your answer under the discussion page for all to comment.

Approach: To measure the mass of copper in the 3 brass alloy by disolving the zinc, filtering andweighing the copper.

Constants: mass of the 3 brass usedvolume of acids usedconcentration of acid usedintial temperature of reactants

Apparatus: beakers 2g of brass samples eachfilter funnel 1 mol/dm3 of hydrochloric acidfilter paperselectronic balance

Procedure:

1. wash and dry all apparatus.2.