Task 1 Distilling Water

Task 1 Distilling Water Distillation is one way of removing dissolved substances from water. In this task, you will experiment with and observe how distillation aects the quality of water.

Estimated time to complete: 2.5 hours

You’ll need these materials:

cooking pot or saucepan with lid (a transparent lid works best) stove or hot plate microwave-safe plastic bowl that ts in the pot, large enough to cover more than half the width of the pot salt food coloring oven mitts Keep hair, skin, and clothing away from the heat source. Be careful when handling hot water to avoid burns. You must use a microwave-safe bowl to prevent the material from melting. If the lid is hot, handle it with oven mitts.Follow these steps to obtain pure water from the distillation of salt water. Then answer the questions that follow. 

• Add about 2 inches of water to the pot.
• Add salt to the water until the water tastes salty (A).
• Add several drops of food coloring to the water.
• Place a plastic bowl in the pot. The bowl should oat on the water (B).
• Put the transparent lid on the pot upside down (C).
• Heat the pot until steam condenses on the lid. Water that condenses on the lid should

drip down into the plastic bowl. Do not let the water boil. If the water boils, turn o the heat and check the plastic bowl to make sure that water from the pot has not splashed into it.

• Turn the heat on and o intermittently to allow steam to condense on the lid and collect

in the plastic bowl for a period of about two hours. The heat will be turned o for much of this time but the water will still be hot. Again, do not let the water boil. Never leave the stove or hot plate unattended if the burner is on.

• Carefully remove the lid from the pot, and take out the plastic bowl. Use oven mitts as

necessary. Be careful not to touch the hot surfaces or the hot water. Allow the water in the plastic bowl to cool (D). 

Part A Compare the appearance of the water in the pot with that of the water in the plastic bowl.What do you notice? Next, taste the water in the plastic bowl. Compare the taste with the sample of water you tasted earlier from the pot. Does the water taste similar or dierent?Explain.Do not taste boiling or hot water; you may burn yourself.

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Part B Explain what happened to make the water in the plastic bowl dierent from the water in the pot.Appearance seems the same Taste is different, condensed water does not taste salty 

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Part C Suppose that a community located near the ocean is considering distilling seawater to obtain its drinking water. Based on what you’ve learned about distilling water, do you think that distilling ocean water would be a good solution to meet this community’s water needs? Give reasons for your answer.

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Dispose of your materials properly:It was evaporated, so there was no salt in it The pot however, still had salt in it It would not be very effective because of the time it would take.It took two hours to make about a half cup of the water, so providing water for a whole town would be very expensive