Revisiting the Determination of Percent Aspirin Lab: Using a Limiting Reactant Approach for Students To Also Determine the Amount of Iron(III) Chloride

Abstract

The spectrophotometric determination of the percent composition of an aspirin tablet is a common first-year, general chemistry undergraduate laboratory procedure. The experiment requires that a known amount of pure acetylsalicylic acid be quantitatively converted into the soluble disodium salicylic acid that is further reacted with excess iron(III) chloride solution to form a deep blue tetraaqua-octahedral complex. This complex, through serial dilutions, is used to construct a Beer’s law plot that may be used to determine the concentration of aspirin. In a novel twist, this paper describes how the same Beer’s law plot can be used to determine the concentration of iron in the iron(III) complex, which is then used to determine the concentration of the original iron(III) chloride solution used to make the aspirin–iron(III) complex. The method has been adapted by high school students in determining iron concentrations in stream waters.