Buffers Lab Report

The purpose of this experiment was to test how effective certain homogenates were as buffers. Buffers are devices that keep pH within maintainable boundaries so something can function. When something is too basic (has too much OH-) the buffer adds H+ and vice versa in order to create water to keep the pH at an acceptable range. Each group (I was with William Yung for this experiment) was tasked with testing one homogenate. The homogenate tested by our group was liquid spinach. Each team added HCl and NaOH to their homogenate. As we found out in our experiment, HCl was an acid so when added to the liquid spinach the pH lowered and NaOH, being a base, rose the pH level when added. The better the buffer the homogenate is, the less its pH changes
Acidity is how many H+’s a molecule has. The more acidic something is, the more H+ molecules and the more basic, the less H+ molecules. For our experiment, we first measured and poured 25 mL of the liquid spinach into a beaker and then tested its pH using litmus paper. Then we measured the pH after every 5 drops of HCl added and stopped measuring after a total of 30 drops. We did the same procedure using NaOH but made sure to clean out the beaker so that the HCl wouldn’t affect the experiment. Below is a data table and graph created by the data collected from the different groups.Basically, the commercial buffer’s pH changed the least. Of all the homogenates, the liver seems to act as the best homogenate given that its pH changed the least. Distilled water acted as a very bad buffer because its pH changed drastically when HCl and NaOH were added. In fact, it didn’t act like a buffer at all. The degree of which these substances were able to limit the change in pH varied depending upon the solution. Some substances such as liver acted as a good buffer because its pH changed very little, whereas others’ pH's such as water changed