Prev. Article Next Article Table of Contents

Article

Identifying Bottled Water: A Problem-Solving Exercise in Chemical Identification

Citing Articles

Your current credentials do not allow retrieval of the full text.

Purchase the full-text

PDF/HTML,
figures/images,
references and tables,
(where available)

Richard L. Myers

Alaska Pacific University, Department of Environmental Science, 4101 University Drive, Anchorage, AK 99508

J. Chem. Educ., 1998, 75 (12), p 1585

DOI: 10.1021/ed075p1585

Publication Date (Web): December 1, 1998

Section:

History, Education, and Documentation

Abstract

The availability of a variety of bottled waters from a number of sources provides a readily available resource for problem-solving exercises in chemical analysis. Students are challenged to identify water samples using the known chemical analyses of bottled waters. Several common water quality measurements such as hardness, alkalinity, and ion analysis can be used by students to identify the unknown water. This exercise develops problem-solving skills as students become familiar with basic lab techniques, quality control, data interpretation, and standard methods. Throughout the activity students become more conscious of both their data and data obtained from references. Students learn that data reported from a source are not absolute values, and develop varying degrees of confidence in data sources.

Keywords (Audience):

High School / Introductory Chemistry

Keywords (Domain):

Laboratory Instruction

Keywords (Pedagogy):

Hands-On Learning / Manipulatives

Keywords (Subject):

Water / Water Chemistry

View: Hi-Res PDF | PDF w/ Links

Citing Articles

Citation data is made available by participants in CrossRef's Cited-by Linking service. For a more comprehensive list of citations to this article, users are encouraged to perform a search in SciFinder.

This article has been cited by 1 ACS Journal articles (1 most recent appear below).

Ion Chromatography: Analysis of Ions in Pond Waters
Kumar Sinniah and Kenneth Piers
Journal of Chemical Education2001 78 (3), 358
- Ion Chromatography: Analysis of Ions in Pond Waters
  Kumar Sinniah and Kenneth Piers
  Journal of Chemical Education2001 78 (3), 358
  Ion chromatography (IC) is a powerful technique for analysis of aqueous media containing a variety of both cations and anions. It promises to replace classical wet chemical methods for such analyses, which are frequently labor intensive and time consuming ...
  Abstract | Hi-Res PDF | PDF w/ Links