Hannah Jonus Mrs.

Perkins H Chemistry (2) 3 May 2010 Building a Buffer In this lab, our main objective was to aim for a specific pH and make a buffer using proper chemicals that matched the pH specified. After we achieved this, our next goal was to test how strong our buffer was by titrating with a strong base or acid. In our first step, after choosing a pH of 7.9 to aim for, my group found the pKa of each acid given to decide which weak acid/conjugate base system we should use. From this, we found that Tris hydrochloride as our weak acid and Tris base as our conjugate base was the correct system to use, seeing that its pKa was 8.3, the closest number to our specified 7.9 pH.

Weak Acid: Tris hydrochloride (C4 H12 NO3 Cl) Ka=5 x 10 Conjugate Base: Tris base (C4 H11 NO3 ) pKa: 8.3

Our next step was to find a ratio of acid to base needed to produce the pH we chose. To do this, our first step was to find the Ka of our acid. So, we plugged in the values of 1 for the molarities of our weak acid and conjugate base, and solved for the [H+] to find the pH, 8.301. Because this pH we found was not the exact pH we needed, we guessed and checked, starting with 2.3 M for the acid, and keeping 1 M for the base. The results of this equation, pH of 7.93, told us we needed to make our acid a bigger number of moles, so we changed it to 2.5 M. This gave us a pH of exactly 2.9, our desired pH. Now that we found the proper mole ratio needed to make our buffer solution, we needed to convert moles to grams so that we could weigh out the right amounts needed to make our buffer.

2.5 M x 157 C4H12NO3Cl = 392.5 g C4H12NO3Cl / liter 1 M C4H11NO3- x 121 g = 121g C4H11NO3-

Because these numbers are so big, we scaled down this same ratio by 150:

392.5g / 150 = 2.7475 g C4H12NO3Cl of acid. 121g / 150 = .806 g C4H11NO3- of base.

Ratio = 2.7475: .847

After we made our calculations, we weighed out the appropriate quantities into our beaker. We then added 100 mL of distilled water and dissolved the mixture completely with the magic bean. We then tested our buffer solution with a pH meter and got a result of 7.9. Since our desired pH was 7.9, we were extremely successful with the creation of our buffer. Once we confirmed that we made a proper buffer solution, we challenged our buffer with acid and base to find out how strong our buffer was by performing a titration. First, we set up a buret filled with 35.8 mL of HCl and place the beaker filled with our buffer below it. After adding some universal indicator to the buffer, we mixed the solution with the magic bean, which turned the mixture green. While still stirring, we added 5 mL portions of the HCl into our buffer. The pH of the first 5 mL was 6.32. We added more and more portions of HCl until we recognized a dramatic change. Since we had to add so much acid, this told us that our buffer was very weak.

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