Weekly Blog 10-9-15

Today we once again had a study/work day. Yesterday we concluded the aspirin lab and we came out with some good looking results. We scraped our acetylsalicylic acid crystals out of our beaker and put them onto a Pyrex watch glass. My lab partner and I put this out to dry over Fall Break to ensure there is no other contaminants within the product. Below are some pictures that were taken throughout the course of our experiment.

This was during the first day of the experiment. We placed the sulfuric acid, acetic anhydride, and the salicylic acid into the Erlenmeyer flask and then put it in a hot water bath for 12 minutes.

This picture is the first picture we took of the crystals after they formed overnight on the first night. After this, we scraped all of them out with a glass stir rod and put them into the top of our buchner funnel. This was a tedious process due to the fact that the solid crystals did not want to remain in the center of the filter paper.  

The picture above is when my lab partner and I retrieved our acetylsalicylic acid from the Buchner funnel. The purpose of the funnel was to separate the solid product from the liquid.