WHAT TO KNOW FOR ADVANCED LEVEL CHEMISTRY PRACTICALS
                             Qualitative analysis

The GCE Advanced Level practical session have not really been a mystery as people say. Advanced level chemistry practical just like any other practical session like advanced level physics practical and advanced level ICT and advanced level Computer science have basic principles it works on. It is divided into sessions all made to test your knowledge on all the theories you learned in class.

Advance level chemistry practical is, divided into a qualitative and quantitative analysis. In this article, we will be focusing on qualitative analysis and hope you come back for quantitative analysis. Qualitative and quantitative analysis are the two major sections and I believe you should be able to access the reason for carrying out a qualitative analysis and the reason for carrying out a quantitative analysis. 

Qualitative analysis does not have anything to do with the volume of a substance but goes according to its name meaning it turns to look for the quality of a substance in a sample.

 

Qualitative analysis identifies specific elements like the presence of a substance such as a metal or a functional group like an alcohol or carboxylic acid group.

Qualitative analysis

In qualitative analysis, there exist a data referral books for the identification of elements and compounds. These elements can be cations (+ve charged), anions (-ve charged) or organic.

TChunghwa, Lord KumKwe and Ngulle Emmanuel write the best books as of now with many other books used in the national territory depending on the school you find yourself. 

Before exam: What you can do before exam is, to identify and group specific parts of that book to enable you glance through it with little time wasted during the deal day. Qualitative can be organic or inorganic and both always come.

Know the colors of the flames of metals and even if you can’t memorize them, glance through them. 

When you go and burn your salt in the hall, the color of your flame will correspond to one of the metals. 

What happens often is that the metal is always bound to an anion and the other text will be to identify the particular anion that was on the metal. For example, along the line, you will be adding particular solutions and getting a proposal. 

For example 

You burn a salt and get:

•  A lilac flame of the salt, it tells you it is potassium (K+).
• A green flame tells you it is Barium (Ba2+) 
• Golden yellow flame for Sodium (Na2+)
• Blue-green flame tells you it is Copper (Cu2+)
• Orange-red tells you it is Calcium (Ca2+)

You are, asked to add silver nitrate and observe: 

Always report what you see because the colors give you an idea. For example, after adding a quantity of silver nitrate:

1. The solution appears white and the question says it was a halogen salt then suspect Chloride ion. Therefore, the salt can probably be KCl.
2. A cream precipitate is suggestive of Br. Hence KBr.
3. On the other hand, yellow precipitate that is suggestive of iodine hence KI.

If you are, asked to add, dilute ammonia or concentrated ammonia to the halogen salt, to confirm the specific anions:

1. Chloride will show colorless for both dilute and concentrated ammonia
2. KBr will give a cream precipitate in addition of dilute ammonia but will appear colorless in concentrated ammonia.
3. KI will appear yellow on mixture of both concentrated and dilute ammonia.

Often times, if you take note of the first one, it can easily give you a working solution and all you have to do is to follow their procedures on the other questions that will just be clarifying every doubt you had.

It is not cram work. Just know what to do and how to search your book.

I will be uploading a similar article for Quantitative analysis in less than 24 hours. Hope you return and do not forget to share this article with anyone that can be, impacted by this article. Knowledge is, meant to be, shared.