Ok so the holidays are over and now its time for the preliminary practical examinations. Since the two science subjects I am taking are Chemistry and Physics, Im taking practical examinations for them. And today was the Chemistry Practical Exam. Which was unfortunately not too good.
Naturally one would feel nervous upon entering the lab. Our class had already practiced quite a lot of times for the Chemistry Practical Exam, unlike Physics, where we only had 2 practices. Usually the Pure Chemistry Exams would consist of 2 parts - titration and quantitative analysis.
The first disaster happened because I was so damn blur. The indicator they asked us to use was methyl orange. It was supposed to go into the aqueous sodium hydroxide. However, I saw the label on the bottle wrongly. Instead of putting methyl orange into the aqueous sodium hydroxide, I went and put acidified potassium dichromate (VI). Because acidified potassium dichromate (VI) and methyl orange look the same colour, I was blur enough to use the acidified potassium dichromate - and I forgot to read the label on the bottle. When I put the acidified potassium dichromate (VI) into the aqueous sodium hydroxide, the solution turned from colourless to yellow, instead of orange. So everyone around me had a orange solution in their conical flasks and I had a yellow solution. And so I tried again, but I was blur once again. Finally on the 3rd try I realised my mistake and by then I had already wasted a whole 15 minutes trying to figure out why the heck was my solution yellow instead of orange. After the disaster I then completed 3 more proper titrations. I hope they are accurate. And the calculations after that - I hope I got them correct.
QA was not very good, because it was very messy. I managed to finish every single step of course, but I could not firgure out the final answer. And I was blur again because in the final answer, where based on your experiments, you have to deduce the element in the metal, I gave them a complex ion. Which is obviously wrong.
So today was bad, and tommorrow is Pure Physics Practical. Hopefully I won't be so nervous and blur and will be able to do better the next round. Have tuition now, so Im going.
