Last Thursday we started on a three day lab that involved a reaction between iron and copper (II) chloride. On Friday we took the iron (a nail) out of the solution and some pretty cool but kinda nasty stuff had happened. Some copper was left in the bottom of the jar while iron off of the nail had dissolved into the liquid. The jar was then dumped of solution, rinsed, and left to dry. On Monday when we came back, we measured out the amount of copper in the jar. Using these measurements (weight of nail before and after reaction, weight of copper, and weight of jar) I was able to find the percent yield of the reaction was around 75%. The percent yield is the actual amount divided by the theoretical amount. This shows us how there was other stuff going on inside the reaction that we have no control of. More info on percent yield here.
I found this lab actually very exciting because it explained some sort of chemical manipulation in that we were changing regular Fe to an Fe2+ or an Fe3+
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