The Process of Research in Chemistry
The Process of Research in Chemistry
The aim of science is the betterment of humanity. Scientists are constantly working with the same aim in their minds. The term scientist certainly rings the names of great scientists like Einstein, Newton, Archimedes, Lavoisier, Galileo, etc. They are obviously great scientists.
However, the naming of the term scientist has the scope for you too to be called so. Indeed, science is that knowledge that is gleaned out of systematic experimentation. The process to glean knowledge by experimenting is known as research. One who carries out such research is a scientist.
Therefore, if you carry out research, you can also be a scientist. Experimenting through a perfect and systematic process in order to learn something is called research. It means, there is a certain procedure. Now we shall learn the steps of this procedure.
In the first step of research, you need to determine what you want to learn or what new thing you want to invent. Suppose, you want to learn whether the heat will be produced or absorbed as ammonium chloride is dissolved in water. This is known as topic selection.
In the second step, you have to investigate the matter. At this stage, you will read some books or some papers from the internet and other sources in order to learn how such kind of an experiment was carried out by someone else and what result it did yield. Suppose, you have learned that another chemical compound calcium oxide, when dissolved in water, produces heat.
You will also be able to learn what kind of apparatus, chemicals, and steps were followed in this experiment. That will give you an idea about what things you will require to conduct the test yourself. Besides, you will have an idea about the probable result-in this case, if you dissolve ammonium chloride in water, heat will be produced.
Again, you will be able to decide what kind of materials you are going to use and what will be the steps of the experiment. You came to know that you would need a beaker, water, ammonium chloride, thermometer, glass rod, balance, etc. First, you will take \water in the beaker. You will record the temperature of the water in the beaker with the thermometer. Then, you will weigh ammonium chloride using the balance and mix and dissolve that with the glass rod in the water, a number of times.
Each time, you need to check the temperature of the water. This is the procedure of your experiment. Now you can start your experiment.
Take 250 mL of water in the beaker and check the temperature. Suppose, the present temperature. Suppose, the temperature is 25°C. Record it in your notebook. Now, with the help of the balance, weigh 5 g ammonium chloride and mix it in the water. Use the glass rod to stir so that it gets dissolved. As soon as the chemical is dissolved, measure and record the temperature. Now the temperature is 20°C.
Add, mix and dissolve another 5 g of ammonium chloride in the beaker. See what the temperature is with 10 g chemical in the water. Follow the same procedure again.
Now the beaker's water has 15 g of dissolved ammonium chloride and let's suppose the temperature is 10°C. Record the data in your notebook.
If you analyze the data shown above, you will see, the more ammonium chloride is dissolved in water, the less the temperature of the water becomes. You will decide since dissolving ammonium chloride in water decreases the temperature of the water, ammonium chloride absorbs heat from water in order to get dissolved.
The result is dissolving ammonium chloride in water results in absorption of temperature. The steps followed by you in the above experiment can be shown in the following flowchart:
When you are dealing with some research in chemistry, you are required to follow the same steps.
You may like
