Ibuprofen to Acid Lab Chem 1220

Disclaimer: I could not find any aspirin, so I used ibuprofen instead.

I added 10 ibuprofen tablets to a glass mug and added enough rubbing alcohol to cover them. I then put them into the microwave for 30 seconds to heat up the mixture and then dissolved the tablets to make the solution, and crushed the remaining tablets that did not dissolve. Finally, I used a paper towel as a funnel filter to remove the chemicals that I did not want and to make the mother liquid. After adding cold water to the mother solution, red and white crystals started to form around the outside of the mug. Another observation that I made is that the mother solution went from red and white to just red when the crystals started to form, which was cool because that shows that the crystals had truly formed, because they were no longer in the solution. I learned that you are able to use extraction in order to form ibuprofen into acid. I haven't done many extraction experiments before, so it was cool to see just how effective and quick they are, especially with alcohol. The alcohol temperature rose really quickly, which would make sense, but I just hadn't thought about it before. In conclusion, the crystals did form and were able to react with the acid. Overall a successful and enjoyable experiment.

[dayfree]

Does this experiment show that ibuprofen contains glass? 😮