After a heavy rain, a group of students collected a sample of water from a nearby puddle. They observed that the water was cloudy and had some fine particles suspended in it. When they left the sample undisturbed for an hour, they noticed that some of the particles settled at the bottom of the container. When they tried to pass a beam of light through the sample, the path of light was visible.
i. What type of mixture is the puddle water sample (solution, suspension, or colloid)?
Give reasons for your answer based on the observations.
ii. What would happen to the visibility of the light beam if the students filtered the sample and then passed the light through the filtrate?
iii. Is the puddle water a pure substance or a mixture? Explain.
iv. How could the students separate the suspended particles from the water?
The puddle water sample is a suspension.
Reasons: it is cloudy (heterogeneous), particles are visible (as suspended matter), particles settle down on standing, and it scatters a beam of light (Tyndall effect).
by stoichiometric chemical bonds in the same way elements are in a compound. It's more of an intimate mixing at the atomic level.
Although the components are difficult to separate by simple physical means, the definition of a mixture primarily hinges on the lack of chemical bonding in a fixed ratio and the retention/ modification of constituent properties, along with variable composition.