Question

A student performs an experiment to find the percentage of water in a hydrate. He determines that the hydrate contains 22% water, but the teacher tells him that it actually contains 40% water. What error may have caused him to obtain this low value?

Answer 1

A feasible error could have been the removal of the sample before all water evaporated.

Step-by-step explanation:

In order to determine the percentage of water in an hydrate, an experiment that could be performed is the heating of the sample until the mass does not change. If the student heated the sample an insufficient amount of time, water will be present in the sample, thus reducing the percentage reported.