Distillation sim
Heat the flask. When the liquid boils, its vapour rises past the thermometer bulb, which sits level with the side arm so it reads the vapour that is leaving.
Distillation · covers the GCSE, IGCSE, O-Level topic
What the sim shows
Heat the flask. When the liquid boils, its vapour rises past the thermometer bulb, which sits level with the side arm so it reads the vapour that is leaving. The vapour turns back to liquid in the condenser, where cold water comes in at the bottom and leaves at the top, and drips into the conical flask as the distillate. Salt water: pure water comes over at 100 °C and the salt stays in the flask. Ethanol and water: with the column, ethanol comes over first while the reading holds near 78 °C; when the reading rises, change the receiver. Without the column the reading climbs all the way and the distillate is a poor mixture. The beads give a large surface, so the vapour condenses and boils again many times on its way up; each time it gets richer in ethanol. Distilling can never take ethanol past about 96%. Anti-bumping granules make the liquid boil smoothly. Water and peppermint oil do not mix: they boil together just below 100 °C, and the distillate settles in two layers, the oil floating on the water. Tap the gas tap to light the Bunsen; drag the full receiver away to put an empty one in its place. The heat goes off by itself with 10 cm³ left, so the flask never boils dry. Volumes are added as if they do not shrink on mixing. The clock runs 30 times faster than real time.
- This run
- Earlier runs, lettered A to D
- Blue flame: the heat is on
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