For my chemistry lab class, we had both a written and a practical exam. For the practical exam, we were given a salt which we then had to dissolve in a few different solvent and perform experiments to identify the anion and the cation in the salt we had been given. Mine dissolved in all of the solvents (ammonia, hydrochloric acid, water, and bleach), indicating that I might have potassium as my cation, as potassium is an alkali metal and dissolves in most anything. I then performed a flame test, burning some of my salt, and had a brilliant violet flame, confirming potassium!
After that, I went through a number of experiments to try to figure out the anion. I was able to rule out a number of things since it had dissolved in everything but not bubbled out at the beginning-- for example carbonate bubbles out just like soda carbonation when placed in acid. After adding a number of different chemicals, I identified the anion as sulfate, and got a beautiful dandelion yellow solution at the end. It was such a fun lab! It made me feel like a mad scientist as I combined lots of different solutions to look for specific orders of color changes.
