In: Chemistry
A student forgot to read the label on the jar carefully and put potassium chloride in a crucible instead of potassium chlorate to be heated. How would the results turn out?
That depends on what the student was trying to do. If for example he or she was trying to prepare oxygen by heating up the potassium chlorate: 2 KClO3 -----------> 2 KCl + 3O2, nothing would happen since the compound already is KCl.
OR
Experimenting with potassium chloride instead of potassium chlorate would not be as dangerous as if the student did it the other way around. This is because potassium chlorate is a strong oxidizer, can start fires easily, is hazardous for the environment, and can be a constituent in dangerous mixtures whereas potassium chloride has none of the above attributes. If the student tested the composition of the potassium chloride, he probably did this by heating it in the crucible. At first nothing would happen and then with enough heat the potassium chloride would have melted. Heating potassium chlorate would have generated oxygen gas and left potassium chloride