The results of this experiment seem to somewhat match the hypothesis that I made prior to beginning the experiment, except for small disparities due to human error that may have occurred during the experiment. As stated in the USGS, of our four water samples, Nick’s sample from State College, PA. should have had the highest concentration of calcium and magnesium ions, making it the hardest water, yet it wasn’t. A reason as to why it wasn’t maybe that his sample had to be diluted two times in order to be able to read by the AA spectrophotometer. The hardness of water for the state of Pennsylvania gets harder as you move more and more west, and State College is in the middle so it is understandable for it to be slightly hard (17.1 – 60 ppm). …show more content…
For my water sample and Courtney’s water sample, I hypothesized that my sample would be much harder than her’s, but they quite similar, in fact much more than expected. Our ppm values only varied by 0.5 ppm. In theory, the overall order from hardest to softest water that I hypothesized would be corrected, yet because Nick had to dilute his concentration, his sample ended up being the third hardest water sample instead of the first. Nick’s water sample had 120 ppm based on the EDTA titration, yet for the AA his value was 54.8 ppm. Courtney’s EDTA titration results were 100 ppm, while her AA results were 64.3 ppm. My water sample EDTA results were 160 ppm, and AA was 64.8 ppm. Lastly, Ki Wun’s EDTA titration results were 120 ppm, and his AA result was <6.62 ppm (0.5 ppm). For Ki Wun’s his results are so different because for the AA test, he used his bottled water sample, which had minimal calcium and magnesium