Hello!
I work as a lab assistant at an educational facility and my professor has noticed that our yields for MgCl2 resulting from Mg + HCl are consistently too low. I've run and re-run the experiment looking for what may be causing the trouble, but have so far found nothing. We use 25 ml of 3.0 or 3.5 M HCl and masses of Mg ranging from .2 - .9 grams. This is a pretty standard reaction lot's of first year students will do. Anyone with experience with these reaction aware of what might be causing lower than expected yields?