1. Explain how viewing the flame under the cobalt glass can make it easier to analyze the ion being tested. – What happens is the cobalt glass filters out the yellow light of the flame, so we won’t be able to see anything except the solution burning in the flame. This allows us to see the visible light the ions let out when releasing energy.
2. Explain how the lines seen in the spectroscope relate to the position of electrons in the metal atom. – If the electron gave off a red visible light, or a red bar in the spectroscope, that means the atom did not lose much energy, because it was in a low orbital. Although if the visible light or bar was violet or purple that means the electron fell from a high orbital, showing that it lost a lot of energy. Every other color is in between, in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and purple.
3. Look up the spectral lines for each metal cation and compare it to what you saw in the spectroscope. – The data that my group collected, and the actual color bars were very similar. The only difference we got was for the compound KNO3.
4. How sensitive is the flame test? Could it be used to accurately identify metal ions? What difficulty could there be when identifying ions by the flame test. – The flame test is pretty sensitive, there are many factors that could give you false data. It could be used to accurately identify metal ions, if the person doing the lab is very careful, and does many trials to keep the data accurate. Some difficulties could be burning the Q-tip, or whatever the solution is on. We want to burn purely the solution alone, but that is hard to do.
5. Explain how you could use a spectroscope to identify the components of a solution with several different metal ions in it. – You would take the colors that appear in the spectroscope and find all the compounds that would match the bright lines from a known bright lines list.
6. A student performed a flame test on several unknowns and observed that they all were shades of red. What should the student do to correctly identify these substances? Explain your answer. – The student should compare the bright lines with a known list of bright lines and match the compounds to the bright lines.
7. Fireworks come in a variety of color. Explain how the fireworks manufacturers could get these colors. – So obviously they have the explosion, but if they wanted the firework to be blue, they should find an element that would lose the right amount of energy to release blue visible light, and add that compound to the firework. So they have to add a certain compound to the firework depending on what color they want.