to 10-20, which was written by Stephen Thompson, is a good procedure to determine the hardness of water. They used two different types of testing in order to compare the different results, the EBT and atomic absorption analysis and EDTA titration. The first procedure we did was the atomic absorption (AA) analysis. This was done by using a AA spectroscopy. First the water sample was by atomized and then a beam of monochromatic light is fired from a hollow cathrode lamp which emits a light that is set at a certain frequency that has the same frequency energy as the element you are trying to evaluate. The amount of light of the special frequency absorbed by the atomized sample reflects the quantity of the element that is set for. The calibration of the AA Spectroscope is found by putting samples with known concentrations into it and making a graph of the absorptions recorded from them and then by finding a corresponding regression line. The two following graphs A and B are the graphs with the plots that our instructor, Bin Gu, gave to us in class. Graph A Graph B Therefore, values for samples with unknown concentrations can be derived from the calibration graphs by plugging in the concentration into the equation. For example, with the water sample from Panama City, FL, the Mg concentration found using the AA test was 29.04 mg/L. If we plug that number in then we get the number .5724 which we can compare to the absorbance level which was .5773. It seems that the equation is pretty accurate. Next, we conducted a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) testing. This was done by evaporating two drops of water, our sample water and distilled water. We then compared how much residue was left over concluding that there is more ions that are insoluble in the same water than distilled water. The next part of the experiment was to do the EDTA titration test. This test involved adding agents to the water sample and then titrating that solution with EDTA. The f...
