Dry Mixture Lab Report

Purpose: The purpose of this separations lab was to see what the most efficient way is to separate a dry mixture using all kinds of materials. The mixture was of salt, sand, iron filings, and bird seed.

Results: The results of mass recovered were very different from what the actual mass was. The iron filings were about the same besides recovering 0.1 extra gram. For the bird seed, there was 0.7 grams more collected from the original mass that is 2.0 grams. The sand had 2.5 grams recovered, where the original mass of the sand was 3.0 grams, so only 0.5 grams of the sand was not collected. The sat barely had any mass recovered. There was 0.5 grams recovered and the original mass was 3.0. So there was 2.5 grams of salt that was not recovered.
Or it could have been an error of the person who is using the magnet and could have accidently touched the mixture. While sifting through the birdseed, salt, and sand, the salt and sand could have stuck to the bird seed because during the process, it only said to sift through it once, so if the procedure said to sift through the mixture a few times, then more and more of the salt and sand would have fallen off into the pie tin. While the sand and salt were being mixed with water, the sand didn’t fully come out of the beaker fully and didn’t come out of the filter completely as well. So the sand stuck to the filter and the beaker, and it could have also been an error of the group because there could have not been enough water to allow the sand to completely come out of the beaker. Lastly, the salt didn't have enough water to seep through the filter thoroughly to allow the salt to be on the watch glass. Also it was a group error because there was not enough water for the salt to