RutSum

CBSE Chemistry Practicals

First of all, I want to take the opportunity to thank Ankur Bannerjee, aka GQ, for creating the Chemistry Qualitative Salt Analysis Cheatsheet. It definitely helps you for your Board Chemistry practicals, by giving you an all in one cheat guide to the analysis experiment, all together at one place in a concise form.

Now for the practical news. First, I got to know in the morning that we didn’t have to do the weighing exercise for the practicals; we were getting prepared solutions. So a major time waster was waived off. Next, we didn’t have to write the balanced chemical equations in the salt analysis exercise. Another big block of cramming removed.

A thing which I thought was smart, but very hypocritical was that we were asked to record weighing observations even though we didn’t perform the experiment. We were asked to write down any fictional weight for the weighing bottle, and then add the required weight of the salt to it.

The practical started off well enough, I got a wet salt, which was easy to identify (only by looking) as zinc chloride. I quickly did the acidic and basic radical tests, all of which were positive in the first try, which came as a pleasant surprise (If you have ever done salt analysis, you would know what I mean). Next, was the volumetric exercise. Before even I started performing the experiment, the reading (answer) for the exercise started to float around. “Oye 11.8 ml aa rahi hai reading……….Ma’am keh rahi hain 12 ml ke aas paas hai……….” (The reading is 11.8 ml…….. Ma’am says it should be around 12 ml”).

Then we had our chemistry teacher walking around the lab, telling everybody what their salt sample was. Never thought a board practical would be like this. She also told me how to calculate the molarity and strength of the solution, helped me with the food tests, checked my paper and verified my results. Almost 90% of what I wrote in my paper was dictated to me by my helpful classmates :).

The viva too was awfully simple. I was asked the most basic of questions from our syllabus, which I easily answered. I expect at least 4 on 5 in the viva.

In all, it was a cooperative exam, and it was good for everybody. More of a cheat skit than an exam, if you ask me.

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