Richard Garber Molly Finucane

Honors Physical Science 4

2/4/16
Halogen Lab
2. Introduction
During our lab, we answered a very simple question, which came almost word for word off of
the lab sheet. The question was which halide had the highest relative reactivity. My hypothesis was if
the indicators and the halides produce the correct chemical reaction, then the most reactive will be
Sodium Iodide, followed by Sodium Bromide, then Sodium Fluoride, and finally, with the smallest
relative reactivity would be Sodium Chloride.
To understand this lab better, I decided to do my literature review before I did this lab. This
fared me well. I found out that a halide is a binary compound formed with a halogen, and a different
element. (Merriam Webster, n.d.) I also researched what relative reactivity is. I presumed that it meant
reactivity, as compared to other things within the lab, not to some baseline outside. According to my
findings, (Eddy, n.d.) my presumption was correct. According to him, The relative reactivity of a
group of metals can be established by comparing the reaction of each metal with a given reagent. This
is similar to what we did, albeit with halides instead of metals. Next, I wanted to see what other
people's results on similar labs were. While I didn't find the exact lab at first I did find that in Alkyl
Halides, Hydrogen Chloride is the least reactive, and while it doesn't list Hydrogen Fluoride, the list
then goes on to Hydrogen Bromide, and finally Hydrogen Iodide (Reusch, 2013). I then found that
when silver reacts with a halide, it forms a silver halide. However, when ammonia is added, it usually
breaks this strong bond. (Clark, n.d.) Usually, while Sodium Chloride is completely dissolved, others
aren't.
3. Materials and Methods
During the lab, place 5 drops of Sodium Chloride using a pipet into each spot of a spot plate
which is in the first row of 4. Then, place 5 drops of Sodium Fluoride in the next row of 4. Afterwards,
place 5 drops of Sodium Bromide in the third row, and 5 drops of Sodium Iodide in the fourth row.
Next, add the Calcium Nitrate to the first column. However, only add it to the spots which have a
halide in them, as there is no need for a control for this experiment, due to the fact that there is no need
for control in relative reactivity. Next, add 3 drops of Silver Nitrate per spot into the next column,
followed by 3 drops of Ammonium Hydroxide into the same spots and columns. Use three due to the
fact that it is impossible to add 2.5 drops, and 3 is the closest. Then, into the spots in the next column,
add 3 drops of Silver Nitrate again, followed by 3 drops of Sodium Thiosulfate. Into the final column
of spots which were used going to use, add 3 drops of a Starch solution, followed by 3 drops of the
bleach solution. Record information in a data table.
While this was the method which we used, we did some things of note. For instance, we used a
different pipet for each substance, due to the fact that if some of these compounds get mixed, they can
either ruin our experiment, as with Silver Nitrate and Ammonium Hydroxide, or kill us even, as with
Ammonium Hydroxide and the Bleach Solution. Another way in which we differ is that we did all of
our qualitative assessments immediately after adding the solution to the spot. While this did increase
the time it took to do this lab, it made our results much better, due to the fact that sometimes the
precipitate didn't have enough time to settle to the bottom. We recorded all of our data in a 5x5 data
table, due to the fact that there was one column and one row for the labeling, leaving for the rest of the
places on the data table for writing down our assessments.

Richard Garber Molly Finucane

Honors Physical Science 4
2/4/16
Halogen Lab

4. Results
NaCl

NaF

NaBr

NaI

Ca(NO3)2

Slightly Cloudy, no Clear, no

precipitate
precipitate

Clear, some
precipitate

Clear, some
precipitate

AgNO3 + NH4OH

Clear, slight white Cloudy, eggshellprecipitate

like precipitate on
bottom

Slightly cloudy
dirty white, slight
white precipitate

Very cloudy,
precipitate, looks
similar to milk
Very Cloudy, white
yellow, slight
brown also visible

AgNO3 + Na2S2O3 Clear, yellow tint.

No precipitate

Clear, no
precipitate

Clear, slight
yellow tint, no
precipitate

Starch + Bleach

Clear, slight black

precipitate

Cloudy, black
precipitate

Clear, black
precipitate

Dark Black, black

precipitate, not see
through
Due to the fact that this was a relative reactivity lab, there were no calculations to be done.
There were also no graphs, as it would be absurd to attempt to try to graph qualitative assessments. For
our lab, we used a data table similar to the one above, although done on paper.
5. Error Analysis
Due to the fact that no everything is perfect, there could have been some errors done in this
experiment. For example, student Charlie Floyd, in his experiment, had something done to either his

Richard Garber Molly Finucane

Honors Physical Science 4
2/4/16
Halogen Lab
starch or bleach solutions, resulting in his staying clear, and lacking a precipitate. As the pipets were
leaking, it could have been that for some I may have added some extra material. Due to my vision not
being perfect, I could've possibly simply not seen some precipitates, or, due to absentmindedness,
forgot to record them. However, I believe that when it comes to errors, the errors which were produced
in this experiment were few and far between, due to the sheer simplicity of this experiment.
6. Discussion and Conclusion
I believe that my hypothesis was only partially supported. While I do believe that the most
reactive was the Sodium Iodide, followed by Sodium Bromide, I believe that Sodium Chloride and
Sodium Fluoride tied for last. This is due to the fact that while you can see the natural progression from
Sodium Iodide to Sodium Bromide, those two simply, while reacting differently, performed
approximately the same. Sodium Chloride, while having reacted with more, had very small reactions,
lightly changing in tint, becoming slightly cloudy, or getting a little bit of black precipitate. Sodium
Fluoride however, reacted with less. It produced no visible changes with the Silver Nitrate and Sodium
Thiosulfate reaction, for example. However, in the reaction with Silver Nitrate and Ammonium
Hydroxide, it reacted significantly more, being significantly cloudy, and producing large pieces of
precipitate, when compared to the slight amount which was produced by Sodium Chloride. However,
even with this slight outlier, it does show the correlation between period and reactivity. What with
Sodium Iodide being more reactive than Sodium Chloride. In fact, the high reactivity of Sodium
Fluoride could be an error, though I would not know, as I only did the experiment once.
The lab was extremely interesting, and very well put in place. It was a sort of transition between
our previous unit, where we discussed reactivity, atoms, grams per mole, molecules, and other things,
to our new unit on acids and bases, due to the fact that those halides were salts, and after a discussion
on salts, it is quite easy to begin talking about bases. However, that doesn't mean that the lab was
without its own problems. For instance, I believe that we should've had 3 trials, and then shared our
data with the class. This would improve the data delivered, making lab reports much better. I also
would've converted our measurements from drops to milliliters, even if it means 1 mL of something.
This would make the fact that the pipets leak slightly a non issue, as it would be measured in a
beaker. Overall, I believe that this lab reinforced the idea of reactivity on the periodic table, and was a
good lab to do our first full lab report on.
7. References
Works Cited
Reusch, William. "Alkyl Halide Reactivity." Alkyl Halide Reactivity. Michigan State University, 5 May
2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.
"Reaction of Alkyl Halides with Silver Nitrate." UCDavis, 02 Oct. 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.
Eddy, Daniel. "Relative Reactivity of Metals." Louisiana Tech University Chemistry. Louisiana Tech
University, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.
"Halide." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016.