We visited the desalination plant on Wednesday. Although I’ve been there before multiple times, I still learned something new! I didn’t know that street names in downtown El Paso were named after paths travelers took to specific towns and cities (San Antonio, San Francisco, etc.).
While the ceramic project is on the back burner, I worked with my mentor on another project assigned by my PI. We used silver nitrate and sodium chloride to see what the minimum amount of molecules put together would be visible by the naked eye.
We made solutions for both using DI water and using decreasing amounts of particles (diluting it by reducing the amount of sodium chloride and silver nitrate by putting them in 9 mL of DI water).
There was a lot of math involved (calculating Molarity of each) and we’ll be looking at our results today!
Hey Frank!
That sounds super cool! Do you know what your goal target is?
The goal target is to come up with a chemical education procedure that include simple visual analysis, the synthesizing of compounds, and a step-by-step instruction for students to practice calculating molarity.
Why are you looking at silver nitrate?
Hey, Jodie! We used silver nitrate and sodium chloride because silver chloride is highly insoluble, which makes it easier to see if a precipitate forms.