Flame test

(Flame test done on 26.07.11)



My partner also took videos but I can't possibly upload all so here's a video of a really pretty flame~ The metal is lead if I'm not wrong :D You can see the flashes of white but yeah the flame was a little off so the results weren't as nice as some other we did D:)



The colours of the flames are:
Barium - pale green
Calcium - red-orange
Copper - blue-green
Lead - white-blue
Potassium - lilac
Sodium - bright yellow

Ms Tan also showed us some substances which did not change the colour of the flame. These probably are not metals. Also, I thought the remains of the "human bones" she had was carbon since according to what I remember from chemistry, the burnt ("chaota") substances from cooking was also carbon. However the rambio website mentioned that most carbon escaped as carbon dioxide so I did research (: Here is what I learnt:

Cremated remains are mostly dry calcium phosphates with some minor minerals, such as salts of sodium and potassium. Sulfur and most carbon are driven off as oxidized gases during the process, although a relatively small amount of carbon may remain as carbonate. (rambio says it's silicon though. Hmmm)

Here is also the explanation for flame colours:

Origin of Flame Colours
Flame colours are produced from the movement of the electrons in the metal ions present in the compounds. For example, a sodium ion in an unexcited state has the structure 2.8.1. When you heat it, the electrons gain energy and can jump into any of the empty orbitals at higher levels, depending on how much energy a particular electron happens to absorb from the flame. Because the electrons are now at a higher and more energetically unstable level, they tend to fall back down to where they were before - but not necessarily all in one go. An electron which had been excited from the 2nd level to an orbital in the 7th level, for example, might jump back to the 2nd level in one go. That would release a certain amount of energy which would be seen as light of a particular colour. However, it might jump back in two (or more) stages. For example, first to the 5th level and then back to the 2nd level.Each of these jumps involves a specific amount of energy being released as light energy, and each corresponds to a particular colour.
As a result of all these jumps, a spectrum of coloured lines will be produced. The colour you see will be a combination of all these individual colours. The exact sizes of the possible jumps in energy terms vary from one metal ion to another. That means that each different ion will have a different pattern of spectral lines, and so a different flame colour.

:D so cool I should have done something related to this for SIP. Though it might have been too confusing for my brain ><


:) okay that's it. I will also post the chromatography results later.