When you hold a small amount of sodium chloride in a flame, you observe that the flame is bright yellow. What can you do to be s

Question

jonny [76]

2 years ago

10

When you hold a small amount of sodium chloride in a flame, you observe that the flame is bright yellow. What can you do to be s

ure that the color is due to sodium and not chlorine?

Physics

1 answer:

Anon25 [30] · Answer 1 · 2022-07-07T16:42:46+03:00

To be sure that the color is due to sodium, do a flame test. This is used to identify the presence of small number of metal ions in a compound. For sodium, the brilliant color of bright yellow is a result of an excited electron in a very high level of energy and fall to a lower level called the ground state.

In addition, metals have different jump sizes in the energy level and this means that each different metal will have a different pattern of spectral lines, which results to different flame color.