Burning Iron Wool Essay

Our lab was composed of burning iron wool, measuring the initial mass and then the final mass to see how much mass it gained from the added oxygen. The iron wool was first rolled into a ball, not too firmly packed but not too loose. The point of this was one to make sure the individual strands were tangled up well enough, so that any sparks of burnt wool do not pop off, and so that the oxygen (after burning) could reach all the way to the inside stands of the wool ball. Thus, bringing us to our first error: sparks of wool flying off during the burning process. In this experiment, we did not attempt to control the sparks flying off which led to the wool losing mass. This led to a far less accurate percent composition of the wool, thus an inaccurate empirical …show more content…
This led to the amount of oxygen differing, leading to possible incomplete reactions. In other words, there wasn't enough oxygen reaching the center of the wool ball, thus not allowing all of the wool to react. The interaction of the first and second error affected our results, as a more tightly packed ball would result in less sparks flying away, but would also lead to an incomplete reaction, as mentioned above. The two errors interacting with each other led to the percent composition of the wool and oxygen to be inaccurate, leading to an inaccurate empirical formula. The third error that impacted our data was the isopropyl alcohol not being fully evaporated, resulting in a larger initial mass. The isopropyl alcohol was used to get rid of the thin coat of oil on the wool (to prevent rusting). Then, we were to shake the wool ball until all the isopropyl alcohol was evaporated. During this process, there was a possibility that the isopropyl alcohol was not fully evaporated, adding to the initial mass. So instead of just the iron wool being burned, it was then isopropyl alcohol and iron