Heating Baking Soda 1.1
Robert Aquino                                     September 19, 2004


Tray Letter: F

Lab Partner: Logan Hoover

Purpose: To see what happens during the process of eating baking soda over a period of time.

Precautions: Goggles, Fire Hazard, Glass Hazard, Glass Hazard, Spillage, Backup Hazard.

Predictions: So far, I believe that when th e baking soda is heated, it will fully evaporate into the water bottle and push the water out of it.  The baking soda’s gases will need room int he bottle, so the water being pushed out will leave an adequate space for the gas to be stored. After all of this, I beleve that slowly, some baking soda will start to form again at the bottom of the tube.

Observations: Slowly, after we lit the alcohol burner, the water inthe water bottle starte to lower, due to what I think, is the gases of the baking soda. The tub has started to become lined with water,, obviously from the gases that are escaping from the baking soda. The water is slowly going down. It evantually stopped, and the water lining the tub is slowly dripping down into the baking soda. No new water is being “made”. The lab has ended.

Blue Dotted Questions:

-What do you observe at the bottom of the test tub? Near the top?

   At the bottom of the testube, nothing extremley exhilerating is happening. Most of the action is taking place at the top where moisture is starting to accumulate, due the gases being released by the baking soda.

-Does a gas collect in the inverted bottle?

   Yes, the water in th inverted bottle is being pushed out of it, so this means gasses are filling up that space.

-From where did the gas come?

   I think the gases came from the baking soda.

-From where did the droplets on the test tube come from?

   I think it came from a mixture of the water and baking soda gas mixing together, or just the heat of the baking soda and it’s gases created it.

-Is the color in the two test tubes the same?

   No, when we poured tea in testtubes that held the heated baking soda and one that held regular baking soda, the heated baking soda had a darker color, and the regular baking soda had a light color.


-If the color is different, can the white powder in the test tube that was heated still be baking soda? Why or why not?

   No, this white powder is not baking soda becase the regular baking soda and the heated “baking soda” would be the same color when tea was poured in if they were the same exact thing. So now, the heated substance is another “powder” all together.

-How can you compare the amounts of solid, liquid and gas you observed?

   You can compare them by finding their volume, in one way, to see if they each take up the same amount.

Inquiry:

If we did not use baking soda, but used another baking substance, would the results be completly different?

Conclusion: In conlusion to this lab, we saw that heating baking soda not only created gases, it changed the substance completly! This means that structure of the baking soda was changed by heat. Heat can do this to many different things, like when you fry a food, it is said that since the molercular structure is chaning, odd results can occur!