Titrations

part 1
At A2 level you are guaranteed to get a titration calculation question, probably in the transition metals
topic. OCR A tend to get them in the last question of F325 worth quite a few marks, AQA get off lightly
usually with a few simple marks in Unit 5 and for Edexcel, the difficulty varies quite a bit in Unit 5.
Examiners really like to use thiosulfate and iodine titrations in Edexcel and OCR A papers. The other
common one is titrating acid with base.
Titration calculations arent too dissimilar to some of the pH calculations in the acid and base topic and
you can learn a format to answer them.
Even in the harder questions, you can still get most of the marks by doing the same easy steps that you
learned at GCSE.
If you are a bit unclear on titrations, I would have a look at the titration tutorials in the AS section.

Ionic Equations
Before we look at the calculations, a big part of this topic is being able to write out ionic equations. You
must have an equation to get the ratios. Its not only for titration questions, it is useful to be able to do
for other questions too. This means you need to be able to balance half equations.
The first thing to look out for are the conditions: are they acidic or alkaline? When you learned to balance
half-equations at AS, you will have done them all under acidic conditions. The ones where you add H2O,
then H+ and finally add electrons (or the other way round). Remember?
balance the number of atoms and balance the charge
There is a good explanation how to do this in the AS redox part 3 tutorial. Classic example:

Cr2O72- + 14H+ + 6e- 2Cr3+ + 7H2O

Alkaline conditions
At A2, you might get asked to balance a half equation under alkaline conditions. This means you need to
add OH- instead of H+. You will have seen this in hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells but you can learn those half
equations. It could also appear as a stand alone question or along with titrations. For example, to balance
the following under alkaline conditions:
Fe2O3 FeO42-
I have found that students struggle with this as they are so used to adding H+. But what you can do is
balance it as you would normally under acidic conditions to give the following:
Fe2O3 + 5H2O 2FeO42- + 10H+ + 6e-
Then change the H+ into OH- and then swap the OH- with the H2O and it balances perfectly:
Fe2O3 + 10OH- 2FeO42- + 5H2O + 6e-

Remember that the ionic equation is the combination of two half equations, so you would need another
half equation to go along with the one above (usually a simpler equation):
Cl2 + 2e- 2Cl-
You can then add the two half equations together by cancelling electrons:
Fe2O3 + 10OH- 2FeO42- + 5H2O + 6e-
Cl2 + 2e- 2Cl- (multiply by 3) 3Cl2 + 6e- 6Cl-
Full or ionic equation: Fe2O3 + 10OH- + 3Cl2 2FeO42- + 5H2O + 6Cl-
Make sure you can do this otherwise you will be throwing away some guaranteed easy marks.

Titration Question 1
Below is a very standard titration question to calculate the percentage purity.
Determine the percentage purity of a sample of sodium sulphite.
A student dissolves 0.720g of impure sodium sulphite in water. The solution is made up to 100cm3. The
student then titrates 25cm3 of this solution with 0.02 moldm-3 KMnO4 under acidic conditions. The volume
required to reach the end-point is 26.2cm3.
2MnO4- + 6H+ 5SO32- 2Mn2+ + 5SO42- + 3H2O
1. always start by working out the number of moles of the species that you are titrating with. You are
looking for the species with the volume and concentration values given. In this case, KMnO4. This is an
easy mark:
n = c x v
0.02 x 26.2/1000 = 5.24 x 10-4 moles
2. Use the equation to work out the moles of the species you are trying to work out (the unknown). In
this case it is sodium sulphite, which in the equation above is the SO32-. Its an ionic equation so the
sodium isnt needed. Just look at the ratio of the species you have just worked out in part 1 to the species
you dont know:
2MnO4- : 5SO32- (a 2:5 ratio)
Therefore multiply the moles from part 1 by 5/2 1.31 x 10-3 moles
3. always look to see if they took a sample from the original solution to titrate with. In this question, they
took a 25cm3 sample from the original 100 cm3. So they only titrated a quarter of the original solution,
therefore we need to multiply the value in part 2 by 4 to get the number of moles we originally had:
4 x 1.31 x 10-3 5.24 x 10-3 moles
4. answer the question. You are always trying to work out the number of moles in every single question.
At this point all you do is convert moles to whatever they are asking for. They want a %, therefore we
need grams of sodium sulphite. Multiply the value in part 3 by the molecular weight of sodium sulphite:

126.1 x 5.24 x 10-3 0.661 g

We know that we had 0.720 grams originally of the impure sodium sulphite. We now know that the
impure sample contains 0.661 grams of sodium sulphite. Therefore we jut divide the two numbers and x
100:
0.661/0.720 x 100 = 91.8%
With these questions you have a rough idea of how many grams you should get. In this example, it cant
be bigger than 0.720 g, so if your answer is bigger than this you know you have done something wrong!
And with percentage purity it is unlikely to be a tiny percentage.