Science - Testing for Hydrogen Gas Experiment

Hi everyone!

Hope you've had a wonderful school holiday, this may be a late greeting it is already into week 2 of term 2. This is my first science blogpost for term two and I will be writing about an experiment we had done in the last lesson. 

Testing for Hydrogen Gas

Aim: To show that hydrogen gas is produced when a metal reacts with acid. 

Equipment: 

A test tube, a boiling tube, bunsen burner/lighter, wooden splint, a bottle of acid, a piece of metal, safety glasses. 

Method: 

1. Light your bunsen burner

2. Add your sample of metal to your test tube. Add 2 ml of acid.

3. Carefully invert the boiling tube above the test tube containing the metal and acid.

4. Hold the test tubes together for a few minutes, allowing time for the inverted boiling tube to fill with gas. 

5. When the tube is full, your lab partner should light a wooden splint. 

6. Carefully, but quickly, tilt the boiling tube full of gas upward and insert the burning splint into the mouth of the test tube. 

Our way: 

1. Get all your equipment ready, like your test tubes, wooden splint, lighter, and safety goggles.

2. Fill your smaller test tube with 2 ml of acid (depending on how strong the acid is the louder the pop.)

3. Place your piece of metal into the acid, and quickly put the bigger tube over the tube containing the acid. Seal the gap by making sure you're holding the tubes together tightly. 

4. Wait for around 30 seconds at the minimum it can go higher. 

5. After make sure your partner has the wooden splint lit on fire. 

6. Take off the bigger test tube, and quickly place the lit wooden splint into the big test tube. 

Results:

There was big high pitch ¨pop¨ noise. Which honestly gave me a fright. 

Discussion:

The purpose of our experiment, just as the title mentions we were testing for hydrogen gases. Before putting the fire in, the acid and the metal were sorts of bubbling and I could see the metal slowly dissolving. While my team member was holding the two tubes together she mentioned that it was getting really warm. This also made me wonder how but it has must've been caused by the reactions. As soon as we put the fire in the "invisible" gas it created a pretty high pitch pop noise. It also made the gas a bit more visible and it didn't really smell pleasant, but that's all that happened. 

Conclusion:

The first time we tried to do the experiment it didn't make a pop noise because the acid was too weak. So we ended up using a stronger acid which resulted in the high pitch pop sound, which was better. The sound it made sounded like a sneaker squeaking on a court, and the room was filled with this noise. If I could carry on the experiment I would want to see if the pop would louder. If I used a stronger acid or used a different type of metal, the metal we used was magnesium.