How Does Salt Water Affect The Formation Of Rust On An Iron Nail

In this experiment, I tested the effect of saltwater on the formation of rust on an iron nail. To test this, The first step was to fill each labeled cup with the correct ratio of salt to water. The ratios varied between groups which created different concentrations of salt for the different groups thereby constructing different levels of my independent variable. The next step was to record the initial mass of each nail and then place them in the cups. Then, the nails were left to soak in their solutions for 10 days. After that, the nails were removed from the cups with tweezers and the final masses were recorded. Finally, the differences of the masses were found and as well as the average difference for each different salt concentration.
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For one, it is possible that the temperature of my basement, where I help my experiment, fluctuated slightly during the ten days in which I performed my experiment. I did my best to perform my experiment in a spot that avoided any major changes in temperature, but it’s possible that, as the weather got colder, so did my basement which may have affected the formation of rust on the nails. Another possible source of error in this experiment was the fact that the procedure said to use tweezers to remove the nails from the cup and then weigh them. It is entirely possible that the use of tweezers cause some of the rust to fall off the nail before it could be weighed or even get stuck to the tweezers, thereby potentially creating inaccurate data. This mistake could be fixed by weighing each cup with the nail already in it both before and after the experiment instead of just the individual …show more content…
Prior to this experience, I knew next to nothing about what actually causes rusting. This experiment taught me that iron is often found in manufactured items as an alloys because pure iron has a predisposition to rusting. I also learned that rust is actually an iron oxide that is mostly a combination of iron (II) and iron (III) oxides and is formed when iron comes into contact with oxygen and water. This experiment also created many other questions which could be potentially answered with other experiments. For example, I wonder whether the acidity of water affect the rusting of iron in a similar way to salinity or if there are other factors that can affect the formation of rust such as temperature. I am also curious about the formation of rust on other metals compared to iron. Is iron the metal that rusts the most in the shortest period of time or are there other elements that can rival iron’s predisposition to