Flame Synthesis Essay

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The color a flame turns when burning a chemical compound depends on the metal ions the compound’s elements contain. What causes color to be shown is the excitement of electrons in an atom when heated, which makes them jump to a higher energy level. As the electrons begin to return to their original energy level, energy is released as light, coloring the flame (“Flame Tests”, 2005). And as energy increases, frequency increases, but wavelength decreases. The color each chemical turns the flame depends on the light energy’s wavelength. For example, higher wavelengths (around 700) are colors such as red and orange, and lower ones (around 400) appear blue and violet (Timberlake, 2014). This denotes that light energy that gives off warmer colors …show more content…
When putting chemicals on the splint, random amounts were taken. To better the experiment, each splint should contain the same amount of each chemical. Even though this may not change the flame’s color drastically, it could darken or lighten it enough to distinguish between two possible color options. This would, in turn, alter the wavelength, frequency, and energy. Another way the experiment could have been improved has to do with the flame. Throughout the experiment, the flame was not turned on to a consistent concentration. This could have affected the energy of the light. Since a certain amount of energy is needed for atoms to emit light energy, less flame concentration could mean a weaker color. The flame should have stayed at the same level consistently throughout the experiment in order to apply the same amount of energy to each atom (“Why do certain elements change color over a flame?”, 2016). In this experiment, the color of the flame when each chemical released energy was found, which allowed wavelength calculation. Then, each light energy’s frequency and energy were found. All results were as expected. Cooler colors had shorter wavelengths but higher energies and frequencies, and vice versa. The results of this experiment fulfilled the experimental

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