[mofofo900]

Today in chemistry my professor assigned a lab that involves devising then executing an experiment to determine how much co2 a person exhales in a year. The constraints are essentially I can use anything in the lab (just an average chemistry lab in terms of glassware and chemicals) and the only electronic equipment we have are LabWorkstation 750's, spectrometers and electronic balances. The experiment that I came up with involves the test subject breathing into an evacuated balloon then clamping the balloon closed and setting a 500ml flask completely filled with water upside down in a dish of water then releasing a balloon into a tube feed in through the bottom of the flask (thus bubbling the co2 through the water to the top of the flask). Once this is done I was going to weigh the flask + co2 + water and subtract the mass of water and the mass of the flask and I should end up with the mass of co2, but here in lies my problem. This entire apparatus is entirely too clumsy and imprecise. I realize the many errors in this experiment and only reason I designed it this way was because I only had an hour to turn in a plan. I tried submitting another experiment but my professor decided that it was too outlandish to be executed by a chem 1A student. I really need some help redesigning this experiment.
Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated
Thanks,
Mike

[Borek]

Hard to help not knowing what the other experiment was.

What reactions of CO₂ do you know?