SPA Skill 3 Additional Practice

Brass is an alloy made of zinc and copper. It is a very useful metal as it is fairly hard but malleable.
Brass has great acoustic properties and is used to make many musical instruments.The malleability
of brass is dependent on the zinc (and copper) composition. A brass alloy that contains more zinc is
less malleable.
A testing company has received 3 samples of brass alloys from 3 manufacturers.
Devise an experiment to determine the percentage composition of copper in the alloy so that the
most malleable one can be chosen.
Post your answer under the discussion page for all to comment.
Approach:

To measure the mass of copper in the 3 brass alloy by disolving the zinc, filtering and
weighing the copper.

Constants:

mass of the 3 brass used

volume of acids used
concentration of acid used
intial temperature of reactants

Apparatus:

beakers
filter funnel
filter papers
electronic balance

Procedure:
1.
2.

wash and dry all apparatus.

2g of brass samples each

1 mol/dm3 of hydrochloric acid