Composition of a mixture - Mixtures

Composition of a mixture

Activity 01

Materials required ;- Two beakers, potassium permanganate
Method ;- Add 50 ml of water in each of to two beakers. Add 0.2 g and 0.4 g potassium permanganate separately to the two beakers and stir well with a glass rod. Record your observations.

You will be able to see, that the solution in the beaker with 0.2 g potassium permanganate is light purple in colour whereas the purple colour of the solution with 0.4 g potassium permanganate is relatively more intense.

When preparing the above two solutions, the volumes of water taken into the two beakers were equal. That means, the volumes of the solvent were equal. However, the masses of potassium permanganate used as the solute were different. In the solution with a more intense purple colour , a unit volume contains more solute particles. Therefore, the composition of these two solutions is different.

When preparing mixtures of weedicides and insecticides, they must be prepared in correct composition. Prescribed composition should be used when preparing solutions using pharmaceuticals. Laboratory work often involve the preparation of solutions of fixed composition. Therefore, understanding about the composition of mixtures is very important in everyday life as well as in laboratory experiments. There are several ways to express the composition of a mixture. Some of those are discussed in the following sections.