15.You are busy carrying out an experiment when a classmate asks for your help.

Question

15.You are busy carrying out an experiment when a classmate asks for your help. Your friend is holding up a reaction tube and seems confused about which layer is aqueous and which is organic. You are in the middle of a different experiment and you have no idea what is in the reaction tube. So you ask your friend about the solvent he has used for his experiment. Your friend says he thinks he used diethyl ether, but is not sure. He shows you the bottle from which he obtained the solvent, but the label seems to be faded. What can you do to help your friend solve the mystery about the aqueous and organic layers?

Explanation / Answer

When you are confused about which layer is aqueous and which layer is organic, you have to simply take a dropper and add one single drop of water into the reaction tube.

You have to carefully observe the drop of water. If it stops at the first layer, then the first layer is the aqueous layer. If the drop is seen travelling through the first layer into the second layer, then the second layer is the aqueous layer.

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