The Chem 312 students have finished their video report on the results of our ICP-AES analysis of the water samples. This video is designed to introduce our 6th grade partners to the idea of atomic emission and how it can be used to quantify metals in water samples.
For some of the lower abundance analytes (like heavy metals) the results suggested some drift or other source of error, and we were unable to quantify the concentrations of the metals. However, we did obtain useable results for metals that were present in high concentrations, such as sodium, potassium, and calcium. Based on our results, we will revise our procedure for next year so that next time we can quantify all the analytes of interest.
