Lab Procedure

Names: Annabel Wang , Michael Greco, Paul Gong
Materials
- food dye solution: 8 drops red / 200 mL tap water
- bleach solution: 4.5%
- salt water solution: 4.5%
- spectrophotometer,
- stopwatch,
- beaker(s)
- cuvette
- stirring rod
Procedure
1. Obtain 200 ml of tap water, and add 8 drops of red dye to create dye solution
2. Divide the red food dye solution into 3 different test tubes with 2 being filled with 4 ml of
dye solution, and the last being filled with 2 ml of food dye solution.
3. Fill a beaker with 200 mL of water. In order to get the salt water solution, add 9 g of salt
to the water and mix thoroughly.
4. Dilute bleach solution with salt water solution in a 1:1 ratio and stir with a stirring rod.
5. Blank spectrophotometer with plain tap water, and adjust absorbance to read zero.
6. Pour dye solution into the cuvette.
7. Place the cuvette into the spectrophotometer
8. Dial the spectrophotometer to find peak wavelength of the dye solution (approx. 410)
9. Add bleach solution to food dye solution in a 1:1 dye-bleach ratio
10. Start stopwatch
11. From zero to two minutes, record absorbance after every 10 seconds. From two to three
minutes, record for every 20 seconds.
12. Stop stopwatch and camera at 3 minutes (normally the slope of the absorbance zeros
out at this point)
13. Remove cuvette from spectrophotometer
14. Repeat steps 6-13 for the 2:3 and 1:2 dye-bleach ratios
15. Graph data in order to find the overall reaction order: x axis is time while y axis is either
absorbance, ln(absorbance), or 1/absorbance.
16. Determine reaction order by finding linear line based on y axis of absorbance (zeroth
order), ln(absorbance) (first order), or 1/absorbance (second order)
Procedure Comments (Post-Lab)
One way we could improve our procedure would be to go more in depth into calibrating the
spectrophotometer like when finding the peak wavelength. Going more in depth would allow for
easier navigation of the spectrophotometer and data collection. The given procedure was a lot
more specific in terms of measurements and steps and it explained thoroughly on how to find
the peak wavelength which would make it a lot easier for someone with little to no experience
with a spectrophotometer.
In addition, another way that we could have improved our procedure is to collect our data points
in shorter time frames. Our original procedure yielded only 17 data points, which is not enough
to be statistically significant. Collecting more data within three minutes, or extending the time
past three minutes, would enable more data to be collected; at least 30 points are needed for
statistical significance. That way, we are able to collect more accurate data which can make
graphing and calculating for the rate constant easier.
Data
Original data : Lab Data
Mr. Monge Data with Graphs: Bleach Food Dye Graphs GIVEN FROM MONGE (Red 468
nm 10% bleach)
Copy of Bleach Food Dye Graphs GIVEN FROM MONGE (with editing permissions and
linearized graphs)
Graphs
Figure 1: Raw data graph of absorbance vs. time, corresponding to a zero-order reaction
Figure 2: Linearized graph of absorbance vs. time, corresponding to a first-order reaction

Figure 3: Linearized graph of absorbance vs. time, corresponding to a second-order reaction
Analysis
While we cannot directly measure dye concentration in this experiment, we can substitute this
for absorbance using Beer’s Law.
Beer’s Law states that 𝐴 = 𝑎𝑏𝑐, where absorbance is equal to the product of concentration,
path length, and the molar absorptivity constant. Since the same dye solution and cuvette are
used throughout the experiment, molar absorptivity constant and path length are constant. This
means absorbance is directly proportional to concentration.
The reaction order of dye is first-order. Figure 2 gives the highest reasonable R2 value of a
linear trendline, at 0.997. Figures 1 and 3 give linear R2 values of 0.986 and 0.951 respectively.
Visual observation shows larger residuals with an apparent pattern in figures 1 and 3, indicating
that these two datasets are less suited to linear regression.
Because absorbance is directly proportional to the concentration of a substance we can

attribute this to the graphs and conclude that the reaction order is 1.
Finding Rate Constant:
The integrated rate law of a first-order reaction is as follows, where 𝑅0 is the initial reactant
concentration:
𝑙𝑛([𝑅]/[𝑅0]) = − 𝑘𝑡
This can be converted to slope-intercept form:
𝑙𝑛[𝑅] = − 𝑘𝑡 + 𝑙𝑛[𝑅0]
𝑦 = 𝑚𝑥 + 𝑏
We see that slope is equal to − 𝑘. From the slope of the regression line in Figure 2, we can find
−3
the rate constant of the equation, which is around 8. 8 * 10 seconds-1.

Lab Procedure

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Lab Procedure

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Names: Annabel Wang , Michael Greco, Paul Gong

Figure 2: Linearized graph of absorbance vs. time, corresponding to a first-order reaction

Because absorbance is directly proportional to the concentration of a substance we can

This can be converted to slope-intercept form:

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