[Rookie]

We did an experiment today at school, where we started with 0.303g of copper wire, and brought it through all kinds of chemical transformations. At the end of the experiment I weighed the copper dust and it then weighed 0.309 g. Im just curious as to what happened to the mass along the way?  I mean sure there could have been calculation error, but I was being really careful to follow the procedure accordingly   Also... at one point in the procedure, I added phosphate ion , now i was just curious what exactly happened to my phosphate? i mean where did it eventaully end up!?
- thanks for your *delete me*!!

[enahs]

100 thousandth of a gram difference can be so many things. Error in measuring, a few specs of dust could add enough weight to do it.

You ask about phosphate, but you just say “all kinds of chemical transformations” so nobody can speculate what happened. It is also just as likely as some of those reactions did not go to 100% completion and you had a small amount of reagent left to add the extra weight.

A hundred thousandths of a gram is not significant difference, especially considering the equipment you probably had.

[Rookie]

sry, let me be a lil more specific here... we could have started with a copper wire however the teacher decided to first start with Copper (II) Nitrate, then it was transformed into Copper (II) Hydroxide, then Aqueous Copper (II) Sulfate, then Copper (II) Phosphate, then Aqueous Copper (II) Chloride) and last Copper metal. I was just wondering what happend to the phosphate that I added to get copper (II) phosphate. I mean I'm posistive that it is not weighed in with the copper at the end...

[Korokian]

the law of conservation of matter is simply theoretical, errors in calculations are inevitable.

[Rookie]

the law of conservation of matter is simply theoretical, errors in calculations are inevitable.

yes i now understand that, thank you, but I'm still puzzled about my phosphate...