Methodology:

Apparatus
Conductivity meter, 50 ml beakers, pipette, suction bulb, wash bottle

Reagents
Deionized water, 0.1M HCl, 0.1M NH4Cl, 0.1M NaCl, 0.1M NaC2H3O2, 0.1M NaOH, 0.01 KOH, 1.0M
and 0.1M ammonia solution

The experiment was divided into two parts which both made use of an electrical conductivity meter for
measuring the conductance of an electrolyte solution. Current is applied to the outer pair of the electrodes while the
potential between the inner pair is measured. Conductivity, henceforth, is determined by using the surface area and
the distance between the electrodes.

In the first part of the experiment, 20 mL of the 0.1 M solutions of ammonium chloride, hydrochloric acid,
sodium chloride, sodium acetate and sodium hydroxide was prepared in a 50 mL beaker. The conductance of each
of the electrolyte solutions were measured by immersing the electrode in the solution. Afterwards, the electrode
was washed with deionized water by using wash bottle until the reading goes back to zero and dried with a tissue
paper before immersing it into another solution.

The second part of the experiment consists of preparing six aqueous solutions of potassium hydroxide and
water with varying compositions and two solutions of ammonia with different concentrations (0.1M, 1M). The
solutions were also prepared in a 50 mL beaker. The volume of each of the KOH and H2O components are given on
the table below:

Table 1. Volume of the components of the aqueous solution.

Volume of 0.01 M KOH Volume of Water

25 mL 0 mL
20 mL 5 mL
15 mL 10 mL
10 mL 15 mL
5 mL 20 mL
1 mL 25 mL

Upon preparing the solutions, the same procedure in the first part was applied.

For the entire experiment, after each solution was tested, the conductance was noted down as the readings
have been shown directly on the display screen of the conductivity meter. The dissociation constant of a weak
electrolyte, particularly aqueous ammonia, had been determined through the conductance measurement of solutions
of potassium hydroxide, a strong electrolyte, whose ions exhibit the same mobility as those in aqueous ammonia.
The graph for the concentration vs. conductance of such solutions was constructed, from which the equation
obtained from the trend line was used for obtaining the dissociation constant of ammonia ionized in the solution.

Discussion:
There are different factors that contributed to the determination of the electrolytic conductance of a
compound, such that: (1) Nature of electrolyte, (2) Concentration of the solution, (3) Temperature. For (1),
whether a material is a strong electrolyte, a weak electrolyte or a non-electrolyte will affect the conductivity of
water because the concentration of ions in solution will be different in each case. Strong electrolytes form ions
easily, weak electrolytes do not form ions easily and non-electrolytes do not form ions in solution. For (2), the
higher the concentration of ions in solution, the higher its conductivity will be. For (3), the warmer the solution,
the higher the solubility of the material being dissolved and therefore the higher the conductivity as well.
 In the first part of the experiment, the data we acquired showed that Hydrochloric Acid has the highest
electrolytic conductance with 91,600 µS, while Ammonium Chloride has the lowest electrolytic conductance with
7,100 µS. A lighter and smaller compound has higher electrical conductance. Another factor that affects the
conductance of the compounds is their ionic mobility. Ionic mobility is the speed of the ions and through that,
conductance can be determined. A smaller ionic size has lesser resistance and higher conductance since it can
easily transfer an electrical charge from one ion to another.

In the second part of the experiment, we obtained the conductance of both potassium hydroxide and
ammonia solution by the conductivity meter. By determining the concentration of the KOH, the dissociation
constant of Ammonia was determined by plotting the concentration over conductance of KOH which is represented
by a positive slope.

The gathered data for the conductance of KOH showed that there is a directly proportional relationship
between the concentration and conductance such that as the concentration decreases, the conductance also
decreases. Since KOH is a strong base and it undergoes 100% dissociation, increasing its concentration leads to
an increase in the number of ions and its conductance.

With respect to the Ammonia Solution, it can be seen that higher concentration yields a higher
conductance. The dissociation constant of 1M and 0.01 M Ammonia solution was computed to be 1.4424x10-3
and 6.8059x10-7. However, there was an error in the obtained dissociation constant which might have been caused
by the preparation of the said solutions and the temperature since our workplace was under an air conditioner
affecting the results for the acquired conductance. The literature value of the dissociation constant of Ammonia is
1.8x10-5.