During the week of Feb. 20, Mr. Kendal Smith’s, Science, AP Chemistry class did a titration lab. The students spent the week before creating a procedure and then spent two class periods conducting the lab.
“We had to balance the molarity of an acid and a base in a solution that had phenylethylene, which is a universal indicator that will change color depending on whether it is too basic. It will turn a pink color,” Mason Crawford (11) said.
In AP Chemistry, the labs are very important and take up a lot of time. The students had to create procedural plans and follow specific rules and safety precautions, so this class was a little bit different than a regular day in Mr. Smith’s class.
“Whenever we are doing a lab in AP Chem, it starts off like a regular day, but it changes very quickly. We have to get our goggles and have our procedure that we worked on for a week. You have to follow all of the safety precautions or else you can fail,” Crawford said.
During the lab, the students had to carefully drip a base and universal indicator. This indicator would show if the acid and base had reached the equivalence point, which is what the students were trying to find.
“The hardest part was when we were dripping [the base]. We couldn’t drop one drop too many or the base would outweigh the balance and it would turn completely pink, which would mean that you messed up the lab entirely,” Sahin Apalak (11) said.
Some students found it interesting to watch the colors of the acid change, while others enjoyed learning new topics from the lab.
“It was fun just learning how to equivalate and finding the equivalence point of the concentration of an acid,” Apalak said.
