This is a classic. Aspirin is O-acetylsalicylic acid, as depicted to the left.

It reacts with NaOH as a monobasic acid with an equivalent weight of 180.16 g/mol NaOH, a "weak" acid as the usual terminology goes (pKa 3.5) but moderately strong for an organic acid and thus easy to titrate with alkali and an indicator with a somewhat basic pH range. The usual procedure is to crush the aspirin tablet, dissolve it in dilute ethyl alcohol (for acetylsalicylic acid is only slightly soluble in cold water), add a few drops of alcoholic phenolphthalein and titrate. The tablet contains other ingredients but, since they are almost always neutral substances like starch or cellulose , the acetylsalicylic acid is the only reactant with NaOH and therefore easily determined by this simple method. Aspirin merupakan asam asetilsalisilat, itu bereaksi dengan NaOH sebagai asam monopotic dengan berat ekivalen 180, 16 g/mol NaOH, sebuah asam lemah biasanya mempunyai pka 3,5 tapi agak kuat untuk sebuah asam organik dan demikian mudah untk ditritrasi dengna alkali. Prosedurnya adalah untuk meremukkan tablet asprin dan melarutkanya dalam etil alkohol (asam asetilsalisilat agak mudah larut dalam air dingin ) , menambahkan beberapa tetes pp dan dititrasi. Tablet mengandung komposisi lain namun sejak mereka hampir selalu mengandung bahan alami seperti pati dan selulosa, asam asetilsalisilat hanya yang satu satunya bereaksi dengan reaktan NaOH dan oleh karena itu mudah ditentukan dengan metode yang simple. So the usual practice goes. In truth it's not quite so simple. One difficulty, which I've never seen mentioned in undergraduate labs, is that the alcohol used to dissolve the tablet can be slightly acidic. Therefore a blank must be carried through, as I discuss in How to Titrate. But there is a more serious potential error. Acetylsalicylic is unstable in aqueous solution, particularly alkaline solution, for the phenyl ester group hydrolyzes easily: Asetil salisilat tidak stabil dalam bentuk larutannnya, khususnya dalam larutan basa, golongan ester mudah terhidrolisis This hydrolysis consumes up to one more equivalent of NaOH (if hydrolysis proceeds to completion) than is expected for the titration of a monobasic acid. In practice this means that the endpoints of these simple NaOH titrations are never permanent, and the values obtained will tend to be too high. Some of the aspirin determination methods I've seen do mention this problem, but neither of the lab assignments I've had said anything about it. There are workarounds for higher accuracy but, for approximate results, the simple titration is good enough. Hidrolisis menggunakan lebih dari satu NaOH ekivalen daripada yang diprediksi untuk titrasi basa monoprotik. Praktek ini menandakan titik akhir dari titrasi NaOH tidak pernah permanen dan nilai yang didapat akan cenderung lebih tinggi. I used Kroger generic 325 mg aspirin tablets. For titration each tablet was broken up in a 250 mL Erlenmeyer flask with about 75 mL of water and 25 mL of 99% isopropyl alcohol, and swirled until the tablet was dissolved. Then 3 drops of 1% phenolphthalein were added and titration carried out with the 0.0617M NaOH prepared earlier. As expected the endpoints were not satisfactory. I arbitrarily decided that the titration was over when the pink phenolphthalein color persisted for more than 10 seconds.

Tablet #1 (mass = 0.376 g): 29.10 mL 0.0617M NaOH used Tablet #2 (0.373 g): 29.20 mL NaOH Tablet #3 (0.380 g): 29.60 mL NaOH A blank of 75 mL water and 25 mL 99% isopropyl alcohol, titrated in the same way, required 0.18 mL of 0.0617M NaOH. Hence this value is subtracted from the raw volumes obtain above. Calculated values follow: Tablet #1: 28.92 mL 0.0617M NaOH 0.001784 mol aspirin 0.321 g (85.4% of total mass) Tablet #2: 29.02 mL NaOH 0.001791 mol aspirin 0.323 g (86.6% of total mass) Tablet #3: 29.42 mL NaOH 0.001815 mol aspirin 0.327 g (86.1% of total mass)

These figures are within reason, and it is perhaps not to be expected that the exact quantity of aspirin in each table is going to be the same. I have suspected that, while absolute quantities of aspirin may vary from tablet to tablet, the percent weight might be about the same, which would make sense if all the tablets are pressed from the same mixture of acetylsalicylic acid and starch. I would, however, need to conduct more and better titrations to justify this guess.