Separate a mixture of sand, common salt, copper pieces and iron fillings. Also measure the amount of common salt in the mixture. Write the steps and the procedure of separation. Also what safety measures you will take during the experiment.

Explanation:

This question seeks to test the knowledge of separation techniques.

From the narration in the question, the first separation to be done is the removal of Iron fillings by the use of magnet (magnetic separation). Since Iron is magnetic, the iron fillings will be attracted by the magnet hence removing the iron fillings from the mixture.

The second constituent to be removed will be the copper pieces by the use of a sieve (sieving). Copper pieces have relatively larger sizes than sand and common salt, hence a sieve (which separates particles based on size) can be used to remove the copper pieces from the mixture.

What will be left in the mixture after the processes above will be salt and water. This mixture will have to be dissolved in water; the salt will dissolve in water while the sand will not. After which, filtration will be done to remove the sand which will be collected on the filter paper as filtride and the salt solution will pass through the filter paper as filtrate.

The salt solution can then be evaporated to dryness to retrieve the solid salt from the solution.

The amount of salt in the mixture can then be measured using a weighing balance.

Some of safety measures to be taken during the course of this experiment includes performing the experiment in an airtight and controlled environment. Lab coat and hand gloves should be worn during the course of the experiment. The evaporation to dryness should not be done close to an inflammable material/substance

most historians agree that gabriel mouton, the vicar of st. paul’s church in lyons, france, is the “founding father” of the metric system. he proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. mouton based it on the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the earth (now called a nautical mile, 1852 meters). he also proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a frequency of one beat per second as the unit of length (about 25 cm). a pendulum beating with this length would have been fairly easy to produce, thus facilitating the widespread distribution of uniform standards. over the years, his work was revised, improved, and extended by a number of french scientists.

the political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the french revolutionary national assembly was the bishop of autun, better known as talleyrand. under his auspices, the french academy appointed several committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures for france. one of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length equal to one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian (i.e., one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the north pole).