Notes

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the world, and can be produced from many methods inside and outside the laboratory. Aluminum is usually a silvery white in color and if often known to react with dilute acids to produce hydrogen gas. This lab includes the reaction of solid aluminum with aqueous sodium hydroxide and liquid hydrogen oxide to form aqueous sodium aluminate and hydrogen gas. In order to determine how much Aluminum we need, to produce a certain amount of Hydrogen gas(when hydroxide is in excess), we use stoichiometry and gas law equations to estimate our required amount of reactant. As the hydrogen gas is being collected under water, first we subtract the pressure of the water from the pressure of the room to find the partial pressure of hydrogen. Then we find moles of hydrogen gas used by plugging in previously measured values into the equation PV= nRT. At last, we set up a ratio between moles of hydrogen gas and aluminum to find the moles of aluminum required, which can be later converted to grams.