[a.dunn.wa]

Hello,

I am looking for assistance from you chemistry maestros, geniuses, and experts on how to handle a 5-day lab of identifying unknown compounds using limited resources.

We were given four unknown compounds and a list of fifty possibilities. I am not as interested as in you guys helping me identify them (atleast not yet), but more interested on how you guys would tackle this assignment--no procedure is given to us, we can do whatever we want given the resources we are provided with.

Resources given are as follows:
Water
Ethanol
Red and blue litmus paper
0.1 M silver nitrate solution*
Bromothymol blue indicator
Phenolphtalein indicator
0.1 M NaOH solution
0.1 M K₂SO₄ solution*
phenol red indicator
0.1 M HCl
0.1 M H₂SO₄

And then stuff like hot plates, B.B.s, elec. conductivity meters, thermometers etc. are also provided.

So basically I have two questions:
1.) What would your rough procedure look like and why (what each test would accomplish)

and

2.) What do all of these given testing chemicals do? I know what some do but the ones with asterisks I put next to I am not really sure of, and I hope you can help me out.


I appreciate your guy's help so much, and I hope you take the time to reply if you can help. It means a lot to me!

Andy

[Arkcon]

This is a classic assignment, and there are spoilers for the procedures everywhere, perhaps even in your textbook.  So kudos to you for trying to work out a plan first.  What you want to do is build a sort of tree-shaped flowchart, with each test (start with the ones you know) separating the possible compound based on what reaction you would, or wouldn't get.