Flame Test Lab Report Essay

In this lab, we tested the effect of flame on different chemical solutions. In order to do this, we used a wooden stick soaked in a metal and nonmetal solution, hovered it over a bunsen burner, and recorded the color that the flame changed to. The seven solutions we tested were lithium chloride, strontium chloride, calcium chloride, sodium chloride, barium chloride, copper chloride, and potassium chloride. However, we had another four additional solutions, which had unknown chemical composition. Thus leading us to the guiding question of the lab: what are the identities of the unknown solutions? We conducted this flame test in order to quantitatively test for the presence of certain metals in a chemical solution. When the solution we
By placing atoms of a metal into a flame, electrons can be induced to absorb energy and jump to an excited energy state, this is called a quantum jump. They then return to their ground state by emitting a photon of light. The amount of energy in the photon of light determines its color. For example, when a photon gives off red light, you can determine that it does not have a lot of energy because red light is the lowest of visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum. Opposite to that, violet light would have the most amount of energy because it is higher up on the electromagnetic spectrum, which is because it has shorter
Our data revealed that unknown number one was lithium chloride because of the very similar dark red color of the flame. We determined the second unknown to be strontium chloride because both flames gave off a similar bright red color. The third unknown’s flame had a very distinct salmon color, identical to the flame of potassium chloride. And the fourth unknown was barium chloride because both flames burned bright, neon