CAIE IGCSE Chemistry Flame Test Colours

Practise describing a clean flame-test method and identifying lithium, sodium, potassium, calcium, barium and copper ions from flame colours.

Exam points

use a clean nichrome or platinum wire or a wooden splint and place the sample in a non-luminous flame
identify lithium as red, sodium as yellow and potassium as lilac from their flame colours
identify calcium as orange-red, barium as light green and copper as blue-green

[Maximum number: 1]

Sodium hydrogensulfate, $\mathrm{NaHSO}_{4}$ , dissolves in water to produce an aqueous solution, X, containing $\mathrm{Na}^{+}, \mathrm{H}^{+}$ and $\mathrm{SO}_{4}{ }^{2-}$ ions.

State the observations when the following tests are done.

A flame test is carried out on X.

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12.5.4—Use of a flame test to identify the question 1