Advanced higher chemistry investigation: purity of aspirin

Hi there,
So I have decided to do my investigation on purity of aspirin, and the two methods I have chosen are melting point and titration. However, I am not quite sure exactly what I am supposed to do. I am not sure whether I am supposed to just test purity of aspirin tablets or whether I am supposed to make (prepare) my own aspirin and test the purity of that or what exactly I am supposed to do. Because some of the websites I found said that to test the purity using melting point, you are supposed to prepare your own aspirin, purify it and then test the purity of that, so I am confused as to what exactly it is that I am doing. Any help would be appreciated

It's not necessary to make your own, i've seen loads of people do purity testing investigations without making it. Anything you make will have a pretty low purity anyway. The point of the report is to "investigate"-get different brands of aspirin and investigate their purity to see if they match up with what they say on the packet.

you'll get a lot more answers for this in the scottish qualifications forum

I'm going to get 4 different brands of aspirin and do a titration and melting point test on each brand. But I can't seem to find a straightforward method for melting point anywhere, would you have any ideas?


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You would need to get melting point apparatus, its a small machine that you plug into a socket and you stick capillary tubes with small amounts of your sample in and watch for it to melt. I'm not sure if thats something a school would stock, you could ask the technicians to order you one but it might be too late for that, not sure.

There might be another way to test the melting point but thats the only method i know and its the one i use as a chemistry undergrad.

Yeah we have it in school, but it says you have to use crystals to put into the capillary tube, but I'm using commercial tablets so can I just crush the tablets into a powder and then use that or do I actually have to make crystals out of the tablets and how do I do that?


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