In: Chemistry
List (a) the starting mass of your aspirin tablet (mg) (b) the amount of ASA recovered and (c) the calculated mass of expients / binders that were not recovered and (d) the melting point of your isolated ASA.
I want to know the question (C), when the starting mass of my aspirin tablet was 386mg and my tablet contains 5 grains of ASA (1grain=65mg) and the amount of ASA recovered was 0.073g and we did not measure the melting point yet.
The tablet is said to contain 325mg of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and so, when the starting mass of tablet is 386mg, 325mg of ASA should have been isolated. But as only 73mg has been recovered, assuming that the rest have been washed off due to affinity to binders and wastage in washings and chromatographic separation, it can be said that out of the 386mg of tablet, 313mg of the tablet is the calculated mass of binders/other inseparable components that are not ASA. If however, the calculated mass of ASA not recovered is asked, it is the difference between the 5grains of ASA that should have been recovered and the 73mg that was recovered, giving 252mg of unrecovered ASA.