Ascorbic acid, or Vitamin C, is a vital part of the human diet. Humans, however, are not able to produce their own ascorbic acid from glucose, and therefore have to obtain ascorbic acid from what they eat. Vitamin C helps speed up the healing of a wound and helps in the production of white blood cells. In addition, Vitamin C is essential for healthy blood vessels, gums, teeth and bones.

Many people take Vitamin C tablets to supplement what they receive from their daily diet. Ascorbic Acid is the main ingredient in the Vitamin C tablets. There are, however, other ingredients in the tablets. In my lab I determined how much Ascorbic Acid is actually in the tablets, and what percent of the actual tablet was made up of Vitamin C. To accomplishthis, the process of titration was used. In this titration, the object was to find the concentration of the unknown acid (the Vitamin C) by adding a known amount of that substance to a known amount and a known concentration of a base (1M NaOH). For an indicator I used phenolphthalein, which turns bright pink when in the presence of a base. When the indicator turned a very light pink, I had added enough NaOH. The average amount of NaOH that I added during each of my six trials was 2.8ml. The equation for the reaction between the Ascorbic Acid and the Sodium Hydroxide is 1NaOH + 1H₂C₆H₆0₆ --> 1Na₂C₆H₆O₆ + 1H₂0. Using this equation, I found the average amount of Ascorbic Acid in the tablets to be 610mg, or 81.5% of the Vitamin C tablets.

 

Top