Metals and Oxygen:

Metals and Oxygen:

Aim: To make a metal oxide and observe the difference in properties of the product compared to the reactants.

Equipment: A piece of magnesium, busen burner, safety glasses, metal scissor tongs.

Method: 

1. light your Bunsen burner.

2. hold your piece of magnesium in the scissor tongs. Ensure you are holding onto the very tip of the magnesium.

3. Place the other end of the magnesium into the Bunsen flame (At the top of the blue flame.

4. When the magnesium begins to burn,do not look directly at it, as the light emitted can permanently damage your eyes.

Observation: Once we put the metal on fire it made a bright light because of the reaction of oxygen hitting the magnesium.

Discussion: We basically put magnesium into the blue flame, once we saw it was on fire we took it out of the flame and with the reaction of oxygen that hit onto the magnesium it make a bright white light. That was way to bright for anyone to actually look at, we did this many times just because it looks really cool.

Conclusion: Basically we saw the reaction magnesium had when oxygen hit it once being on fire.