Mixing chemicals with methanol and other compounds to discover which

compound mixtures cause certain colors

Authors; Alblinger Kai, Barragan Carlos, Marcus Makayla, Posa Alex, Ruppel Matthew

High Tech High North County, San Marcos Ca 92068

Mr. Ruppel's 10th Grade Chemistry Class

Experimental Procedure:
For this experiment, a variety of substances were ignited by kitchen matches. A control
group was created by using methanol to test how the flame reacted without any chemicals.
Before the kitchen match was ignited, the watch glass was mixed with methanol and the variety
of chemicals we used (Calcium Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Etc). After the mixture of the
chemicals were placed on a watchglass, would be ignited, and different color fire were observed.
Then people had different jobs. One person would mix the chemicals together. 2nd person would
light the matches.

Results:
Chemical

Compound

Flame color

Control (Methanol)
Lithium Chloride

CH3OH
LiCL

Pinkish red

Calcium Chloride

CaCl2

Orange/ Blue

Calcium Carbonate

CaCo3

Orange Blue

Potassium Chloride

KCl

Blue/ Red

Borax

Na2B4O4 . lOH2O

Orange/ green/ sparks of blue

Copper (II) Sulfate

CuSo4

Purple/Blue/Green sparking
sort of like fireworks

At the end of the Lab My group and I came to a realization that the unknown substance
mimicked much of the same attributes that borax contained. Lithium Chloride and Methanol
produced a bright pinkish red flame, which was a beautiful sight. Calcium Chloride made a
orange flame that had hints of blue in it. Calcium Carbonate with Methanol acted much like
Calcium Chloride. Potassium Chloride created a red flame with spots of blue. Borax was simply
amazing and sparkling creating a multi colored flame. Copper Sulfate also acted like borax
because it had a multi colored flame and created sparkles.

Conclusion:
In the end, we considered the possibility of the unknown chemical compound containing
traces of Borax as a result of their flame colors being almost identical. It also was very
interesting to discover the other chemical flame colors. This was a very interesting project and I
learned a lot about how different compounds can transform other compounds, and how some
compounds can be very deadly on their own but when combined can make them completely safe.
One follow up experiment I would do would surround these questions:
Why did we do this experiment by using methanol?
Is their another compound we can use besides methanol?
We started to think and discovered that if I did this same experiment 10 times would the results
still be the same? After doing my research I discovered that methanol is a toxic, COLORLESS,
chemical compound. Because methanol is a colorless compound it helps the other chemicals
make a different color flame because of the methanol you had to mix it with.