Who’s Cheating on the Vinegar?

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Who’s Cheating on the Vinegar?

Introduction:

This is an investigation to discover which, if any, fish and chip shops are diluting their vinegar, and therefore cheating their customers.  This is carried out by testing different solutions of vinegar and comparing their concentration to that of Solution A which has not been diluted.  A pilot experiment was done first to ensure the method worked.

Theory:

Neutralisation occurs when an acid and a base react and neutralise each other.  This can be shown using the pH scale, all acids have a pH of below 7 and all bases have a pH of over 7.  When the substance is neutral the pH is 7.  

The neutralisation reaction is shown like this:

ACID + BASE               SALT + WATER

Vinegar is made from Ethanoic acid which is obtained by oxidising Ethanol.  Its symbol equation is CH3COOH.  As it is an acid, it can be neutralised.  The equation for this is shown above, in this experiment we used Sodium Hydroxide as the base.  This was the equation:

CH3COOH + NaOH                 CH3COONa + H2O

The result is that Sodium Ethanoate and water is formed and the acid is neutralised.

Neutralisation is used in everyday life, for example in the treatment of wasp stings.  Wasp stings contain bases, such as histamine, so they are treated with anti histamines which are acidic substances.  Another example is the making of fertilisers, in which the acid is neutralised with another substance, for instance Ammonium Sulphate ((NH4)2SO4) is made by neutralising Sulphuric acid with Ammonium.

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The concentration of a solution is shown in Moles.  The equation for working out the molarity of a solution from the volume of acid and base used is

Na = Ma x Va                 

Nb    Mb x Vb

In this equation, Na stands for the number of moles in the acid, Nb stands for the number of moles in the base.  These figures are obtained from the balanced equation.  Ma stands for the molarity of the acid, and Mb represents the molarity of the acid.  Va and Vb represent the ...

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