Cut a 10 cm strip of magnesium ribbon.

Clean it with emery paper and wind it round a pencil to

make it into a coil. Weigh two empty beer bottle caps (make sure any plastic inside the caps has
been removed) and then weigh them with the magnesium. Place the cap with the coil of
magnesium in it on a clay triangle and then put the other cap on top. Heat strongly with a
Bunsen burner until no more reaction occurs. After cooling reweigh.

Safety
The only real hazard is the danger of burns from touching the set-up while it is still very hot.

Evaluation
Students are often pleased if they do obtain MgO for the empirical formula or disappointed if
they do not. Ask the students what assumptions they have made and how each might affect the
result if they were not true. There are many false assumptions , perhaps the biggest is that
the magnesium is combining only with the oxygen in the air whereas in reality much of the
product is magnesium nitride not magnesium oxide. If you do use the beer caps then you have
to assume that the paint that burns off will not affect the result but in fact the mass change due
to this is insignificant and should have little or no effect. You can then ask them how the
experiment could be improved to give a more accurate answer. A full explanation of this together
with how the calculation should be carried out using sample results is given below and can be
downloaded as a pdf file, calculation and evaluation of magnesium oxide .